


Tidus' Adventures in Traverse Town

by CB_Magique



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: AU, Alcohol Abuse, Disney Songs, Gen, Gizmo Shop, Heartless - Freeform, Multi-Crossover, Traverse Town, What if Tidus ended up in Traverse Town?, contemperous with Kingdom Hearts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-03-11 13:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3328442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CB_Magique/pseuds/CB_Magique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Sora, Riku, and Kairi hadn't been the only survivors of the Heartless Storm on the Destiny Islands? Tidus finds himself in Traverse Town and is practically forced to work as a tinkerman at the Gizmo Shop. As Sora travels the worlds battling the darkness and searching for the only friends he thinks he still has, Tidus travels around Traverse Town doing his job and keeping an eye out for any friends he might still have. Just because he doesn't have a Gummi Ship doesn't mean he can't have remarkable adventures of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What Happened to My Islands?!

**Author's Note:**

> Oh hai!  
> So, this has been a story that has been in the works over on ff.net since 2009 now. I never finished it. My decision to start posting here simultaneously was spurred by a total revamp of this story. I had become stuck with the old version and it was really bringing me down trying to keep writing for the sake of finishing. Especially because I had no plan or direction, I made a lot of stuff up and fell into a lot of lazy writing traps that made me feel like I was being amoral towards the plot and the characters and I thought it was terrible. 
> 
> But, as of 2k15, it is now a much better fic and I'm proud to repost it. I've got it sketched out to the end properly and I feel like I can get there without it being terrible.

One more night meant one more embarrassing situation for Tidus. A concerned islander knocked politely albeit persistently on his front door. Tidus knew exactly what this was all about and wondered if he could lock himself in his room and pretend to be asleep already. No, that wouldn't work. He had the radio on since the TV wasn't working (again) and the lights were still on in the living room where he sat brooding on the woven mat on the floor. He looked over at the back door. There was no one there – he could see through the wooden crosshatch wall and the fly screen door – so he might be able to sneak out and escape through the mangroves right outside. But that situation was a bit more mess and bother than was worth something like this that happened almost every night.

The wind picked up in the darkness outside, fluttering the pages of the novel he'd been reading for the school's summer book report and teasing the tassels on the woven sheets that covered the futons folded into sofas behind him. It was a cold wind. Tidus put his hands on his bare arms and rubbed the skin slowly. The radio on the stool beside one of the futons crackled as the signal dropped out every now and again. The storm made the reception worse than it usually was.

"Local meteorologists are warn... proaching stormy weath... gale force winds... heavy monsoonal downp... ll not be a cyclone..."

"Tidus, I know you're home," the islander on the other side of his front door said. "Please answer the door."

Tidus sighed and finally got up. He went into the next room, which was normally used as a study of sorts. Wobbly bookshelves stood against the wall and the desk was piled with the rest of Tidus' summer homework, which he had yet to attempt. The windows and louvers were closed but the person at the door could still see him through the flyscreen door. He turned on the light and opened up for them. It was a dark-haired woman, accompanied by another woman who also had dark hair and other similar features. He couldn't hide his disappointed sigh when he saw the person the other woman was trying to support with all of her might.

"I'm sorry," he muttered.

"Don't be," the woman at his door replied. "I'm sure it's as hard on you as it is on everyone else if not harder, right?"

"That's just the thing," Tidus said. "No one else should have to deal with this. I'll take him to bed."

"He's all yours," the other woman panted, heaving the chiselled, muscular mass off her shoulders and almost dumping it on Tidus.

"Thanks. Don't get caught in the storm on your way home, okay?"

"Don't worry about us, we'll be fine," the first woman said, letting her sister lean on her. "You just worry about your dad."

They turned to leave. Tidus gave them a small wave as a goodbye and dragged his father into the house. He could only drag him so far before he had to dump him on the floor, his lean preteen muscles unable to carry his father very far. He shut the door and dragged his dad by the wrists into his bedroom where he managed to heave him onto his bed. His father grunted and rolled over in his sleep as soon as he hit the mattress. He had the strong, unpleasant odour of alcohol coming off his breath and his skin. Tidus brushed the dry strands of black hair out of his face and went to get a glass of water and a couple of painkillers. His father would want them in the morning. Then he returned to his place on the mat in his living room and started brooding again.

They hadn't told him what had happened this time, not that Tidus wanted to hear it. Every night his dad got blind drunk and embarrassed himself. Sometimes he could refrain from doing so but every other night was as humiliating as the next.

He tried to get the thought of it out of his head. Tidus thought instead of his friends Sora, Kairi and Riku and wondered where they were going to go on that raft of theirs. He turned off the radio and its annoying cackle, left with just the wind howling outside. If the storm was getting this rough, what would happen to the raft? It would most probably be smashed to bits by roaring waves or blown out to sea to be lost forever. Kairi would be disappointed if that happened after they'd done all of that hard work. Tidus had to admit it; he liked Kairi... a lot. He would hate to see her upset and while he was disgruntled by the fact that she was choosing to leave he knew she'd be happy doing it. He wanted her to be happy, even if it was without him. Sora and Riku were capable of protecting her if worst came to worst, especially Riku.

Tidus hugged his knees close to his chest and hid his face behind his knees. He admitted defeat this time. The least he could do for her right now, he thought, would be to save her raft from the storm. He got up and grabbed a raincoat, just in case he needed it, and headed out into the windy weather.

The clouds swirled and clumped overhead, dark and ominous in the night sky. Yet the sea was still calm enough to sail in. Every now and again a fork of lightning split the night sky. Tidus hurried towards the beach where the jetty was to get his boat and head towards the little play island. All of a sudden a peculiar quake shook the earth beneath his feet. He looked up to the island's volcano, wondering if it was erupting despite no warnings of seismic activity but it was still smoking lazily. No lava dribbled out of the cone and rocks weren't exploding from the main vent. The ground underneath him suddenly cracked. He stepped over the crack, staring at it in bemused awe. He looked up at the sky. Those foreboding clouds were swirling around one particular spot: the island.

A ball of dark mass appeared above it and a whirlwind started up, drawing everything towards it. The island broke apart piece by piece and was sucked into the dark ball. The land around Tidus began to break and crack even more. Cyclonic winds tore up man-made structures and sucked them into the darkness. The volcano crumbled away, the trees were torn from the soil, roots and all, houses disintegrated and soon enough the ocean itself was being drained into the dark ball. The ground was lifted from right underneath Tidus' feet. He screamed as he fell down, down, down into the pitch black abyss.

This new darkness around him wasn't threatening. It was cool, not cold. He had the feeling that there was something on his skin. It was touching him everywhere and when he opened his eyes and looked he saw bubbles. There were bubbles all around him, falling from his body as if he was diving into the water. Yet he could still breathe. He spiralled down even further but he didn't mind. This experience wasn't frightening. Slowly, slowly, he drifted down onto the floor of this huge, empty darkness and lay there, still, calm and relaxed. He closed his eyes.

Something dripped onto his forehead: a shimmering droplet that had fallen from somewhere up above. More droplets fell around him, making ripples in the floor. They fell like a light rain. Each ripple lifted off the floor, broke itself and became a piece of string. The strings all bound together, creating, building an entire town. They made everything from the tallest chimney to the flattest paving stone, to the smallest crack.

That drop fell on Tidus' head again. He groaned and looked up, staring at a tap above his head. It was broken and unused but some water inside it was still dripping. Another drop fell on his head. He sat up and looked around for his raincoat, unable to find it. Around him were wooden crates and garbage cans. It was a dead-end alleyway stinking of rot and decaying food, so Tidus forgot about the raincoat and left.

Upon leaving the alleyway he found himself in a narrow, paved street lit with dim lights on the walls and hanging over doors. He followed the street down to the closest bright light he could find and ended up in a square. It was fairly small and the centrepiece was a round fountain made of grey stone. He walked up to it, passing through one of the gaps between the four garden beds that each had a tall, black lamp at their corner. He looked up at the fountain. A mermaid sitting in half of a clam shell was carved there with long hair spread out behind her and a little fish she held in her hands spat a steady stream of water into the fountain, as did two large dolphins at her side. Blue lights around the base shone into the water, creating that wavering, watery reflection that bounced onto the statues. The buildings around it were all residential, except for one large establishment that took up all of one side of the square with a large set of stairs that led up to double doors.

"Where am I?" He whispered to himself, twisting his hands in the hem of his shirt. "What happened to my islands? Wakka? Selphie?"

No response.

"Riku? Sora? Kairi... Dad?"

There was silence all around him save for the sound of the fountain trickling. There wasn't even a cricket chirping. Then all of a sudden there was a rustle in the garden and something darted between two bushes. Tidus gasped and eyed the bushes. There was nothing.

"Hello? Is there someone here?"

A dark shadow jumped out of the bushes wearing clanking armour – a little dark monster with glowing yellow eyes. It leaped for him without hesitation. He screamed and put his hands up to protect himself, squeezing his eyes shut. Loud gunshots rang throughout the square. He felt no pain. Nothing had happened. He opened his eyes and glimpsed through his arms to find that the dark monster was gone. He lowered his hands and looked around. There wasn't a trace of it anywhere.

"W-who did that?" he demanded, berating himself for sounding so shaky. He squared himself and steeled his resolve to be braver than he really felt. "Show yourself!"

"That would be me," said a deep but soft spoken voice. Tidus gasped and turned to a street branching off the square. A tall, ashen-skinned man dressed all in black stepped out into the light. His right arm was hidden behind his dark grey and rugged cloak but his left arm held up a red double-barrelled gun.

Tidus sighed with relief. There were other people here after all. Then the gun was suddenly pointed at him.

"Who are you?" the man demanded. "What is your purpose here?"

Tidus froze. He gulped. "I-I-I'm Tidus... f-from the Destiny Islands. Speaking of which, do you know where I am and what happened to them?"

"Kaze!" someone called from the shadows of that street. A short, young woman also in dark clothes burst out into the square. "It's alright, Kaze, you got 'em all. This guy's just a kid… probably."

She turned to Tidus, brushing her fringe to one side in a vain attempt at keeping her black hair out of her eyes and held her hand out to shake. "Evening. I'm Alana."

Tidus tentatively accepted the gesture and found himself jostling with the vigorous handshake. "Hi, Alana. Um... you don't happen to know where this place is, do you?"

"Of course I do. I live here. This is Traverse Town. If you weren't swallowed by the darkness when your world was consumed, this is where you'll end up."

"Consumed? So, what happened to my home? My Islands... how do I get back?" Tidus asked in a panic.

Alana's face fell and she regarded him as if she was on the brink of tears. "I'm sorry… you don't. There's no known way to restore a world that has already been swallowed. You must really new around here, eh? Don't worry, Kaze and I both know how confusing that can be. Your world was destroyed and then you wind up in this strange, dark place with monsters everywhere and all of your friends are gone."

"The monsters are everywhere?" Tidus exclaimed.

"Er... don't even worry about that," Alana said, slapping Tidus on the shoulder and giving him an energetic shake. "We at the Traverse Town Gizmo Shop have Kaze here to protect us. Right, Kaze?"

Kaze put his gun in its holster and grunted.

"That means 'yes'," Alana explained. "Come on, I bet you're still really upset and all. I'll take you to the hostel to meet Madame Ebony. She's wonderful." Tidus bowed his head and tapped the tips of his fingers together. Alana bent down to look into his face, seeing the downcast expression. "What's the matter?"

"All my friends... all of the islanders..." Tidus tried to hold back a sob. "Are they here too? Or are they gone?"

Alana frowned sadly and patted him on the back gently. "There, there, it's best to be hopeful. If they survived they'll definitely be here—the lost always find their way eventually. Now let's go, looks like someone needs a cup of Madame Ebony's special Seven-Star Soup. It'll cheer you up in no time, even just a little." She put a hand on each of his shoulders and steered him down the street that both she and Kaze had appeared from.

Meanwhile, in a different part of town, Sora was awakening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'll be putting a glossary and some notes down here for future reference. At this point, I intend to explain some things and provide some non-specific credits to the non-orignal characters and songs. I'll be laying these glossary notes here IRREGARDLESS of how obvious you think they are. You never know. I once met a 23-year-old who had never seen The Little Mermaid and never understood any references to it.
> 
> Kaze: A character from 'Final Fantasy: Unlimited', an anime. He's pretty much as I describe him here but there are a few conceptual changes that I will elaborate on later.
> 
> Jecht: Tidus' father from 'Final Fantasy X', reprising his role here as Tidus' alcoholic dad with poor parenting skills.


	2. The Second Star to the Right

The hostel was a bland building, not out of place with the 19th Century architecture all around it. There was only a small bronze plate on the door with the words 'Tinkermen's Hostel' to let anyone know what it was. The chrome number '96' above it caught more attention. It was only a little ways down the street from the square and a fiery, yellow light in a flower-shaped sconce shone down on the door. From inside came the sound of jolly music. Alana took a golden key out of her pocket and turned it in the keyhole. She pushed the door open and ushered Tidus inside. He could hardly contain his amazement.

There was a vast assortment of people in the large room they'd just entered, which was mostly filled with tables and chairs save for some space near an upright piano and a reading corner. There were children, old people, young adults, humans, anthropomorphic animals, and even robots. Some of them were at the tables or sitting quietly in the reading corner, while there was a small group having a jam session around the piano. A short but skinny middle-aged woman was bustling around serving dinner, assisted by some very hi-tech robots. Upon setting down the last plates she sighed with relief. Then she noticed the three standing at the door.

"Ah, at last, yer back an' yer all lookin' prim and rosy," the woman said, approaching them with her tray in hand. "An' who's this now?"

"Madame Ebony, meet Tidus," Alana replied. "The newest arrival... well, at least to my knowledge."

"Excuse me," Kaze said abruptly.

"Oh, don' be so formal all the time. Ya live here! I left ya a wee somethin' in yer room in case yer hungry."

"You're too kind," Kaze said, leaving quickly. He ascended a staircase to the right of the bar and wouldn't be heard from again for the rest of the night.

"Now, let's see what we got here," Madame Ebony said, turning her attention to Tidus. She put her hand to her chin as she sized him up. "Yer a wee bit on the skinny side, very young too but I s'pose yer fairly well muscled up for a kid. We could put ya up fer a job in the Gizmo Shop by t'morrow."

"A job?" Tidus exclaimed. "B-but I don't have time to look for a job! I have to go and find my friends."

"Oh, don' be silly. That'll be near impossible in a great big town like this," Madame Ebony said.

"I have to at least try," Tidus protested.

"Tidus," Alana said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. "It's no use. Madame Ebony is right. I know I felt the same way you did when I first landed here and it took almost being eaten alive by about a hundred monsters to see that."

"But you're the one who said it was best to hope!"

"I know but sometimes it's better to hope instead of act, you know," Alana rubbed the back of her neck. "Look, Tidus, people are always sending things to the Gizmo Shop to be fixed. One of your friends might show up or you might meet someone who knows what happened to them. It's safer to live with us here than to wander around out there."

Tidus looked at the floor. He could see the logic behind Alana's thoughts but he didn't want to sit idly. His friends could be wandering about getting eaten by those monsters.

"Bless me stars!" Madame Ebony gasped. "Yer shakin'! Come an' sit down an' I'll fetch ya a hot bowl 'o soup."

Madame Ebony grabbed Tidus by the shoulders and forced him to sit at a presently unoccupied table before rushing into the kitchen. Alana followed soon after and sat with him. Tidus refused to look at her.

"Don't take it so hard," she said, trying to cheer him up. "Working at the Gizmo Shop isn't a bad job. Foreman Ivory will make sure you're well taken care of in the workshop. And we get lodging at this hostel with food and everything. Of course it gets taken out of our pay but you'll still have money left over so-"

"Stop," Tidus snapped. Alana shut her mouth quickly and wrung her hands in her lap. "Just... don't talk."

Alana waved away some curious people, indicating that it wasn't a good time. Madame Ebony returned eventually with a steaming hot bowl of soup. She handed Tidus the spoon.

"Careful lad, it's hot," she said quietly before retreating back into the kitchen.

Tidus stirred the contents at his soup and stared at it. He could recognise the broccoli, potatoes and tomatoes, as well as some pieces of meat in there and some spices, but he couldn't put a name to most of the vegetables swirling around in his food. Most of them were green too. Green vegetables were the worst.

"Are you going to eat?" Alana asked.

Tidus stopped stirring his soup and just stared at it. He finally dipped his spoon into it and sipped about half a spoonful, just to taste it. He put the spoon back in the bowl but didn't lift his eyes from it. Alana watched him sadly.

"Is it no good?"

"Seven stars, right?" Tidus whispered. "It's delicious."

Alana smiled.

* * *

Later that night after the music had been stopped and the lights turned off downstairs, Alana brought Tidus up to the top floor. The hall was carpeted with a green rug leading all the way down to a small table with a vase of calendula. There were eight floors in the building, each floor holding twenty rooms, except for the 8th floor, which held only ten rooms.

"We're kinda starting to run out of room," Alana explained, leading him to a door with the number '805' on it and handing him the key. "I hope this place is alright."

"It doesn't matter, I don't plan to stay forever," Tidus replied. "As soon as I figure out how to get back to my islands I'm leaving."

Alana sighed. "Well, until then, just make yourself comfortable, okay?"

"Sure."

"Goodnight, then," Alana said, starting to walk away. "Sweet dreams, Tidus."

Tidus couldn't help smiling at the kind gesture. He unlocked the door and entered the room, flipping the light switch next to the door. It was small and simple. There was a cupboard, a bed on one of the walls adjacent to the door and a wooden desk in front of a window. White, semi-transparent drapes were already hung across the window and were pushed to the side for now. It really wasn't much.

Tidus slowly made his way over to his new desk and sat down on the chair. He gazed at the sky above – dark and starry, yet moonless. There were so many stars but none shone brighter than two high up in the sky. He sighed and went to his cupboard to see if there were clothes already packed into it. While his back was turned he didn't notice a sparkling golden trail make its way from the general direction of the brightest of the pair.

By the time he turned around again the golden trail was gone. He didn't take anything out of the cupboard after all. Looking at it closer the clothes were all mismatched with no conforming style – not even conforming to lack of style – and bore the wear and tear marks that denoted them as second hand. The thought that they might have been possessions of a previous tenant who had run away or perhaps been devoured by the monsters made him sick. He turned back to his window and stared at those two shining stars. _"Stars are so far away,"_ he thought. _"But some of them seem just a little bit closer. I wonder how far away my friends are… Sora, Kairi and Riku, Wakka and Selphie. I hope at least one of them is closer rather than farther."_

There was a light rap on his door.

"You can come in. I'm still dressed," he answered. "And it's unlocked."

Madame Ebony came in quietly. She looked like she was still at work, wearing the black clothing and white apron she'd been wearing before and her ebony hair was still bunched up at the back of her head.

"Feelin' any better?" she asked. "The first night's always the longest."

"I'm fine. Just leave me alone," Tidus retorted. He kicked off his sandals and jumped into bed, pulling the covers up to his neck and facing the wall.

"Don' be like that lad," she said, sitting on the edge of his bed. He scooted away slightly. "It can only get better from here."

"Says you," Tidus muttered darkly.

"Oh, c'mon now, remember what Alana said tae ya: 'it's better tae hope'."

"And do nothing while my friends are running around scared," Tidus added.

"Ya can't say that jus' yet, lad. I'm sure yer friends are findin' the same warmth an' kindness ya found with us. 'Ave ya seen the stars yet?"

"There's no moon out," Tidus grumbled.

"That's 'cause it's already goin' back down on the other side. It's very late, ya know."

"Then why aren't _you_ in bed?"

Madame Ebony sighed. "There's far too much work tae do."

Tidus sniffed but Madame Ebony couldn't see if he was crying or being contemptuous. "You should go to bed if it's so late," Tidus sobbed. Madame Ebony put a kind hand on his shoulder. He jerked away. "Stop that! Stop caring about me! I just wanna go home... I want to find my friends and go home. Oh... but that's impossible, isn't it?"

"Anythin's possible, lad."

"That's not what Alana said. She told me that there's no way to return a world 'consumed by darkness'... whatever that means."

"Like I jus' told ya, anythin's possible. Yer saw that big, bright star in the sky."

"I saw both of them."

"I mean the big, big one: the second star tae the right."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"They say that if ya gaze upon it every night, an' wish with all yer might, it jus' might come true. One day, it'll be dawn again on yer wee island. An' you'll be there.

_"The second star to the right_  
_Shines in the night for you_  
_To tell you that the dreams you plan_  
_Really can come true_  
_The second star to the right_  
_Shines with a light that's rare_  
_And if it's your home you need_  
_Its light will lead you there_

_"Twinkle, twinkle little star_  
_So I'll know where you are_  
_Gleaming in the skies above_  
_Lead me to the ones who love me_  
_And when you bring them my way_  
_Each time we say 'goodnight'_  
_We'll thank the little star that shines_  
_The second to the right."_

Tidus was still. Madame Ebony did the motherly thing and stroked his hair fondly, then kissed him on the top of the head. She left the room discreetly, turning off the light as she went. Tidus blinked when the room was suddenly draped in darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Song: 'The Second Star to the Right', from the opening credits of 'Peter Pan'.


	3. Tinkering With Gizmos

"Tidus! Tidus, wake up!"

Tidus mumbled in his sleep and screwed his eyes shut.

"You must be having a really nice dream or something, eh? C'mon! Wake up!"

"Huh? Selphie?" he murmured, turning over and opening his eyes. Alana stood over his bed giving him a sly smile.

"Who's Selphie?" she asked mischievously. "Were you dreaming about her?"

"Selphie's just a friend," Tidus retorted, turning over and pulling the covers back up to his chin.

"Hey, what are you doing? It's time to get up!" Alana shouted at him. She pulled the sheet right off the bed. Tidus sat up, fixing her with an annoyed glare.

"What's the big idea?" he yelled. "It's still dark out!"

"It's always dark out," Alana explained. "Hurry up and get changed or you'll miss breakfast and we can't have you at work on an empty stomach."

"Work?" Tidus echoed. Oh yes, that's right – he worked at the Gizmo Shop now. He sat up and stretched, readjusting his clothes away from the marked and reddened flesh where his day clothes had pressed into his skin during the night. He looked out the window. It was strange to be waking up while the stars were still glittering against a dark sky. He looked at Alana again. "Well? Can I get dressed without you watching me?"

"Oh! Yeah, see you at breakfast," Alana said quickly, darting out of the room.

Tidus swung out of bed and looked at the night sky outside. The second star to the right and its companion still shone brightly in the night sky. Taking clothes from the cupboard still gave him an uneasy feeling but he was sore from sleeping in his canvas shorts. At the very least the brown trousers and white shirt he found were soft from being well worn and didn't sit in places he'd been chafed. He rolled up the hems to his elbows and knees slipped his sandals back on before he trudged out of his room, mussing his hair and making his way down to breakfast.

Madame Ebony had been up early and was still working with the same gusto she had the night before. She treated Tidus kindly with a bowl of cereal, a side of toast and a fresh glass of orange juice. Tidus finally managed to smile brightly at her. He wasn't one to stay embittered for long, especially when everything that had occurred had never been her fault anyway.

After breakfast Alana joined him on the short walk up to the new workplace. As people finished their breakfast at their own pace a steady stream of workers also made their way towards the large building endowed with the bell.

"Hey, Alana," Tidus said as they walked past the fountain. "You said something about a guy called 'Ivory' last night, didn't you?"

Alana looked up to the sky and scratched the back of her head before shrugging. "I don't know. I can't really remember much of what I said last night. I was all upset about you being upset within five minutes of stepping in there."

"And I thought you knew how I felt," Tidus huffed with a slightly mocking tone. However, Alana took that a little more seriously than Tidus intended her to and suddenly turned to him in alarm.

"Oh! I'm sorry! I didn't want to come across as insincere or anything. I really do know what it's like to lose my friends and stuff and it makes me really sad too..." Alana paused and looked down at the ground. She stopped in front of the first step on the stairway and stared at it. "I know I just have to hope. It's the only thing people like you and I can really do."

Tidus slapped her playfully on the shoulder but a little hard. She nearly fell forward onto the stairs. "Don't get all hung up on that," he laughed. "It'll be alright as long as you can hope – you seem to be really good at that anyway." In a more serious tone he added: "I didn't mean to make you upset by saying that."

"Don't worry about it." Alana waved it off and continued up the stairs.

The double doors of the Gizmo Shop were still closed but unlocked to allow people to walk in and out. As they entered the shop Alana explained that light flooding out of open doors would attract shadow monsters like the one he saw yesterday, so they were kept closed. Tidus gaped at what he saw.

The Gizmo Shop wasn't at all what he expected. First of all, he didn't expect it to be so bright... he also never expected the floor to be bright pink. Each person had their own little workspace within the shop and these were arranged on platforms all connected by pulleys, conveyor belts and walkways. There was the constant hissing and creaking of pistons, gears and levers as the automated machines ran like clockwork. Tidus looked up at all of the workers getting busy already, taking in the bright yellows, greens, and blues that made the atmosphere of the place more like a playroom than a workshop, and the neon lights that curled in intricate patterns on the ceiling. It was so stimulating that he was getting dizzy just looking at it.

"Wow... this place is amazing!" he gasped in awe

"This isn't even half of it," Alana explained. "This part of the shop is just small repairs. There's another section for large repairs and complex mechanics, and then there's construction for orders that come in. And of course there are inventors and the production line. This is a really big complex."

"I can see that. So I have to work here?"

"I don't know. We'll have to see Foreman Ivory first." Alana turned away from him, going towards the huge board next to the door. It was full of slots for little white cards with green writing on them. There were hundreds – maybe up to a thousand – of those slots and they all had a name printed underneath them in gold lettering. Alana took a card identical to the others and put it into an empty slot. She came back immediately and began to push Tidus along by the shoulder. "He might still be in his office."

Alana steered him to a little wooden door that was very inconspicuous amongst everything else. When Tidus first glanced at it he thought it was merely a janitor's closet. Alana pushed the door open and inside was a small office with a single bright neon light curling like a mosquito coil on the ceiling. The left wall was covered in filing cabinets and in the middle of the room there was a large man in a scruffy, white tank top and tattered and paint-splattered green trousers sitting at a small desk stacked with paperwork. There were no extra chairs for visitors to sit in so Tidus and Alana had to stand.

"Foreman Ivory," Alana piped up jovially. The man looked up from the computer he was busy with. "We've got a new worker here. This is Tidus."

"It is 'we have' Alana," Ivory said. "Always speak in full; contractions are the mark of laziness."

"Yes sir," Alana replied obediently but she wasn't the least bit sincere about it.

The foreman stood up to his full height, head almost touching the ceiling. Tidus was rendered speechless. The man's shoulders and back were broad enough that they dominated the space in the room. Despite being dark-skinned he had a healthy mop of white hair that lay flat from the use of a helmet. He examined Tidus with small, piercing eyes.

"He is just a boy," the foreman said, stepping out from behind his desk. "Nonetheless, it is a pleasure to have new company every once in a while. I suppose that you have nowhere else to go given the nature of your arrival?"

"H-how'd you know?" Tidus asked.

" _How did_ I know?" Ivory replied. "You must speak in full. Most people in this town arrived in the Tunnels of Darkness. That is the tragedy of this town." He turned to his desk and picked up a white card with green writing on it. "My wife has already spoken to me about you."

"Madame Ebony?" Tidus guessed.

"That is correct. She believes you are a strong boy and you are fit to do work in the workshops. I myself was sceptical since you are still a child but I do have faith in my wife's judgement."

Foreman Ivory handed Tidus the card. Tidus received it with both hands and stared at it. It had a fancy green boarder and the neat handwriting in the spaces to fill in was cursive, spelling out his name and all of the official details. He smiled as some small piece of pride well up inside at being able to handle an official business card – like he wasn't _just_ a child.

"You should be able to work with the small repairs faculty," Ivory continued. "Your workspace number is written on the card. Alana, would you show him where it is?"

"You can count on me, sir," Alana answered, turning and skipping out of the small office. Tidus followed, holding on to his card. He ran over to the wall and slotted it into one of the only empty slots left available – the one with his workspace number. Alana came over and pulled on Tidus' arm.

"C'mon, you gotta get to work now... come to think of it, so do I. I'll show you where you're gonna work." She looked at his slot and pouted. "Aw, we don't work near each other. Just so you know, I work here in small repairs too. You're really lucky. You get to work up high."

She dragged him away to a little elevator that was more like a balcony on a set of pulleys. The elevator lifted them high, high up – so high Tidus thought they were going to hit the ceiling. The two of them jumped off when the elevator stopped at a walkway suspended from the ceiling. Tidus' workspace was not the highest there was but it was confined within a corner and surrounded by other workshops where people were busily working. The step that allowed Tidus to walk down to his space had the number '779' written on it; the number on his card.

"Well, here we are," Alana declared. "This is where you'll be working. Do your best, okay? I've gotta get down to workspace twenty-two."

Alana stepped back onto the walkway to go back down to her workspace but Tidus didn't really know where to start. The platform he was standing on had rails but they only came up to his knees, however, it was spacious enough that he wouldn't really have to worry about falling off. The floor was patterned with the same bright pink hues as the floor of the entire workspace and his working desk was wide and clear with a toolbox for him to use and three devices already placed on it. There was a simple wooden chair for him to sit on and a large cardboard box full of miscellaneous spare parts under the desk. A working lamp that was anchored to the floor and curled high over the desk to light the working space was already switched on.

Tidus sat down at the desk and looked at what he had in front of him: a typewriter, a remote controlled car, and an old, dirty robot. Directly in front of him was a sheet of paper. He picked it up and read it. It contained all of the information on the broken items before him.

The typewriter had a few stuck keys and a worn rack bar... whatever that meant. The toy car hadn't yet been diagnosed for a real problem, so far all that was known was that no matter how many times the batteries were changed it wouldn't go. The robot was a little bit of a mystery too. It was missing an eye and the radio needed to be replaced but other than that, nobody knew what had caused it to stop working.

Tidus put the paper aside and put the car and robot down on the floor, figuring that the typewriter would be easiest to start with but where to start with it, he wasn't quite sure. It occurred to him that perhaps the simplest thing to do would be to take it apart first and see if anything looked majorly wrong. Problem was: he didn't know how to take it apart. He opened the toolbox and stared at it. There were so many drawers and little compartments; it was a very professional toolbox and Tidus wasn't all that good with tools. He was more of the sporty type, fixing things and building things was the kind of stuff that more creative people did.

He stared at the typewriter, looking around it for a possible starting point. It was screwed together so Tidus assumed he needed a screwdriver, but not a big one. He looked around in his toolbox, pulling out all of the small-headed screwdrivers he could find and tried them in the screws. A couple of the flatheads worked so Tidus began to unscrew all of the screws that held the typewriter together. Even when he got the chassis off, he still couldn't tell what he was supposed to do.

"Having troubles?"

Tidus looked up to the girl who had spoken to him. She was in a workspace just two metres above him, leaning over her short rails all freckle-faced and cheery with her hair done up in red pigtails that were plaited so tightly they stuck out at the sides. Her legs were swinging over the edge in an odd pair of high stockings – one was yellow with green pinstripes, the other was red with black netting over it and a black lace hem.

"You must be new," she continued, smiling at him. "Don't worry, it's always hard to figure this stuff out when you first get here."

"That'd be right," said another girl. Tidus got up from his chair and went over to his rail, looking down at the workspace just below him. There was another girl down there wearing a yellow tank top with spaghetti straps, Capri jeans and yellow sneakers. She looked up from the mobile phone she'd been taking apart and stared at him with blue eyes, flicking her long, brown hair over her shoulder. "You know when I first got here I didn't even know there were different kinds of sandpaper."

"There are different kinds of sandpaper?" Tidus asked.

"I know!" the girl below him said, wide-eyed as if that was nothing short of a revelation.

"You'll get better at this," the girl above him said. "You've gotten off to a good start as far as I can see; you haven't broken it."

"When I was first asked to fix a typewriter, I broke it before I mended it," the brunette girl added. She looked back down at her work. "That took some time to explain to the foreman. Say, isn't he just the craziest guy? He calls you lazy if you use contractions," she dropped the pitch of her voice to parody herself before returning to her normal speech: "'Oh, I'm sorry for speaking English the way normal people do'. It's gonna drive me totally insane one day, I'll bet on it."

"Um, who are you?" Tidus said despite his better judgment telling him not to continue a conversation this way. Looking up and then down quickly between speakers had already given him a sore neck.

"Oh," the redhead said, clapping her hands together. "I completely forgot! How silly of me. My name is Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim's Daughter Longstocking. But if you find that too hard to remember, then just call me Pippi."

"And I'm Miley," said the brunette, making Tidus look down again. "Miley Stewart. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too – both of you. I'm Tidus, by the way."

"Well then, good morning Tidus," Pippi said as though she might have been trying to compensate for not giving a proper good morning when she first opened her mouth. "And never fear! This place ain't so bad once you get used to it… and better at fixing things."

Tidus turned around. Unbeknownst to him he'd unscrewed a few too many screws and while his back was turned the typewriter had been unable to continue to hold itself together on frictional force and fell apart. He groaned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Pippi Longstocking: the titular character of Astrid Lindgren's children's book series. Not a Disney character at all, or a Square Enix character but I just really liked her so I dived headfirst into crossoverland to pull her into this story.
> 
> Miley Stewart: the main character of Hannah Montana. I felt kind of silly about her inclusion but also thought it would be hilarious to scrape from the bottom of the Disney barrel (also known as 'Disney Channel'). I won't rule out this kind of thing happening again.


	4. Three Days in the Making

It had already been three days. Three days and Tidus still hadn't figured out the typewriter let alone the robot or the toy car. Foreman Ivory, of course, wasn't impressed but aside from making Tidus work for an extra hour longer than everyone else each day until the typewriter was fixed he hadn't really punished him. Although, he did make a point of telling Tidus that if he spoke in full as opposed to using lazy contractions he would probably work better. Tidus did not voice what a load of rubbish he thought that was and still didn't know what to do. The only thing he could try was taking things apart but eventually he'd disassembled it so much that he had no idea how to put it back together either. The constant failure up to this point was completely demoralising. Tidus would find himself glaring at the damned black contraption, wishing it would just fix itself.

It had taken three days and Tidus hadn't had the typewriter fixed. But that wasn't the end of Tidus' problems at work. More gizmos had arrived in need of repairing. There was an electric guitar with its amplifier, a cassette player, a lawnmower, and a small bicycle.

At the end of his third day Tidus sighed and slammed the screwdriver down. Everyone had already left – except maybe the foreman but Tidus couldn't really be sure of that. He could have sworn he'd heard Ivory calling up to him and saying that he could come down a while ago. Had he actually been there for more than an hour? He wasn't sure. The windows had curtains drawn across them but Tidus still glared at the unmoving red cloth.

"This is ridiculous!" he shouted at no one in particular. "If I can't figure out a typewriter how does anyone expect me to figure out the rest of this stuff?"

He turned to look at his now cluttered workspace filled with all kinds of broken machines. He sighed heavily and turned on his heel, leaving his workspace as it was and heading down to the ground floor to pick up his card and storm off. Before he walked out the door he turned to look at Ivory's office from a distance. The light was still on and his hulking shadow was still moving around in there. Tidus was fuming at this point, hating even the man's shadow. It was ridiculous and unreasonable to think that a newcomer no matter what age would be able to just suddenly walk in and be able to fix things with a snap even if they never had before. It was a difficult job.

He didn't want to go back to the hostel. He thought he might take a walk tonight but where? Tidus let his eyes roam over the entire building until they suddenly stopped on a red door a few feet from the elevator. He checked that Foreman Ivory wasn't going to be coming out of his office anytime soon and then crept towards the door, not sure if he was even allowed back there. He opened the door as quietly as he could and then shut it behind him.

Tidus looked up at the huge place he'd walked into. It was just as big as the room he worked in but it didn't have many individual workspaces. Rather there were several large machines – all broken – that were surrounded by platforms and robotic arms that were used to fix them. There was a broken down automobile that looked very rickety on those thin wooden wheels, a giant version of the little robot he was assigned to fix, a steam train engine that had been wrecked somehow, and a few other macro machines. This must be the large repairs sector he'd heard about on the first day. Foreman Ivory's office also jutted into this room with another door the same as the one in the small repairs workshop. Tidus probably hadn't noticed it before because it was always hidden behind that man's huge body.

He wandered across the other side of the room, looking up, down, and around at the giant machines that hulked in the dim light like silent statues. His footsteps resounded loudly off the concrete floor littered in metal shavings, sawdust, and oil stains. On the other side of the room there was yet another colourful door. Letting his immediate curiosity get the best of him, he snuck behind it, not paying attention to the warning notice pinned to the wood that said:

" _The special orders section is closed until further notice due to the risk of having hearts stolen._

– _the foreman_ "

The next room was a disappointment. There were no cool broken machines to look at; just the regular pulleys, conveyor belts, and the same large working machines as those in the previous room but unlike the large repairs workshop they weren't tucked away tidily. They hung in apparent suspended animation, frozen in mid-movement. Dust settled thickly on everything and rust was building up, creeping along metal parts from the cobwebbed joints. Tidus took a walk through the maze of machines, slightly disinterested until he spotted double doors at the other side. No one was around to tell him not to so he slipped through those as well.

This next room was just as brightly coloured as every other but also brightly lit. Tidus winced at the sudden assault of light, blinking and squinting until he adjusted. There were no machines here except for a few bellows that were operated with levers that had bird-shaped handles. There was also a clock but it was broken. Nothing was operational, not even the bellows. There was another double door at the end of the room. Tidus made his way towards it, gawking at the strange room and wondering what its purpose could possibly be.

Little shadows appeared in the floor, startling him as they darted to and fro, even sliding under his feet as if they were just part of the floor. They began to rise and take a physical form. They had the same glowing eyes as the armoured monster he'd seen before but these ones were more like little creatures. He turned to run back to the small repairs workshop but was stopped when right in front of his eyes several dark portals opened and those armoured monsters jumped out of them. His eyes darted back and forth between the two adversaries. The shadow creatures jumped for him first.

Tidus ducked under their leap and dashed for the new opening. He flung the door open and dashed outside. Two more dark portals began to open as soon as he stepped out. He ran from them before the shadow monsters could manifest. A little way down the path even more dark portals were opening. Gripped with panic, Tidus rushed into the first building he could open and slammed the door behind him. His heart dropped when right there in the middle of the hall he'd entered four dark portals were opening and dropping off more armoured shadow monsters. Tidus dashed back outside and leaped over the balcony onto the benches below in a frantic attempt to escape. The monsters followed him easily and another much larger group appeared accompanied by more of the little creatures.

Tidus' eyes flickered from left to right. A large wooden door towered from behind the fountain. He made a mad dash for the stairs with the large door in mind. He raced up the steps followed closely by the hoards of monsters. He almost thought he was home free but yet another pair appeared halfway down the path. With the large group behind him and the two new monsters in front of him Tidus could only try the yellow caged door beside him. It was only open a fraction. He ripped it open and slammed it shut, sliding the chain lock into place. He then flew into the red door behind the cage, treating it the same way. The shadows merely slipped through the cage but they stopped at the red door as something clattered against it. Tidus hadn't checked to see what was hanging on the door but it was working to keep the shadow monsters at bay. They slunk away into the shadows from whence they'd come, waiting for another heart to venture away from safety.

Tidus leaned against the door huffing and puffing. He put a hand over his racing heart as if that would help it slow to a normal rhythm just a little bit faster. He swallowed to wet his drying throat and took a deep breath to regulate his shallowed breathing.

"… and so I thought, well, if it helped Nicholas kick Rasputin and his evil powers out of the palace at least once it might keep the shadows away and see! It worked."

Tidus looked up, finally aware of a voice in the building with him. He looked around suddenly. He was in another shop—a sewing shop, to be precise. On the right wall there were balls of wool, spools of threads, zippers of varying lengths, buttons, needles and all other sorts of sewing and knitting essentials organised in little compartments on shelves and hooks. On the left wall there was another shelf but this one was full of books containing patterns and designs for all kinds of projects. Sitting on the counter next to the munny register was a little white bat talking to chestnut Cavalier King Charles spaniel wearing a bright red bow around its neck and looking uninterested in whatever the bat was saying to it.

The bat flopped down on the counter disappointedly. "Well some company you are."

The dog barked at Tidus and the bat looked up, surprised as if Tidus slamming a door hadn't been enough to get his attention.

"Wowie! We actually have a customer... as in, a customer actually coming through the door?" the bat exclaimed. "Now that is something. You'd think with all the monsters everyone would be using mail order but I guess some people will keep on doing the traditional thing no matter what the situation. Howdy, customer! Bartok at your service. What can I do for you tonight… or today… or something, I don't know. You can never tell in this place."

Tidus just stared at him. "You're a bat."

"Well, yeah. I mean, I've got the bat ears and the wings and these little claws on my feet – look, my toes are supposed to bend around so that I can hang upside down off of stuff and they still do, I just train myself to make them stretch out so that I can walk and stand on stuff the right way up."

"You're talking," Tidus elaborated, still staring in disbelief.

"Huh?" Bartok said, tilting his head to the side in confusion. Then he perked up as he came to a realisation. "Oh yeah, I keep forgetting that a lot of people come from worlds that don't have talking animals. I mean, I do too, so I'm actually kinda special but- hey, don't stand there and look like you're about to faint. I don't have rabies and I'm not gonna bite you, honestly."

Tidus blinked and looked at the dog. The spaniel hopped off the counter and ran to the back of the store. Bartok sighed.

"He ain't much of a talker."

Suddenly Bartok's ears twitched as a sound approached. Tidus looked up and looked around. The store was small even though he could have sworn it was much bigger when he was outside it. From the back a young woman with auburn hair wearing a tattered pinafore over a white kirtle appeared carrying a pail of water and a mop. Her long sleeves were pushed up over her elbows and both the pinafore and the kirtle were stained, torn, and frayed so badly that the outfit might as well have been made of rags. The woman put her pail on the floor and dipped her mop into it roughly, splashing some water over the edge. She looked up at Tidus and tucked the flyaway strands of hair from her loose ponytail behind her ears.

"Hey, didn't you know we closed half an hour ago?" she asked. Her eyes suddenly narrowed and she turned her glare to Bartok.

"Hey! Hey! How can I tell when it's eternally night time?" Bartok defended himself. He flew under the counter to retrieve a set of keys to lock the door.

"And now you're just going to lock him in here?" the woman said sarcastically.

"I don't wanna send him out there," Bartok replied, dropping the keys on the counter and resuming his previous position. "That'd be really mean."

"I guess," She looked at Tidus again. "How'd you get here?"

"I…" Tidus began, "I walked… sort of."

Her eyes widened in astonishment. "You walked? Through Second District?"

"If that's what that place out there is, then yeah, I did."

"Wow… you're either brave, stupid, or really powerful if you got here that way," she said, looking down at the soapy water in her pail. "So, are you an actual customer? Or are you here to seek refuge?"

"I was running from the shadow monsters," Tidus explained, "and this was the first place I walked into where the monsters didn't follow me."

"Yeah, those shadows are really pesky," Bartok said.

"Um... so, who are you guys?" Tidus finally asked. "And why are you running this shop if you don't expect any customers?"

"I've already told you my name! I'm Bartok!"

The woman sighed. "Don't mind him. My name is Anya. And you?"

"I'm Tidus."

"Well, nice to meet you Tidus," Anya said. "I just wish I was in a better state. I suppose you lost your world and need a place to stay. Or are you a native here?"

"No, I lost my world and I have a place to stay, I just don't wanna go back there."

Bartok nodded. "I see where you're coming from buddy. There's no way, no how I would wanna be running through Second District twice in one night... or day. And as for why we're running this joint, well, we don't run it. We just have to work here. We didn't even get a choice!"

Tidus gave an understanding smile. "I know what you mean."

"Yeah," Anya sighed, finally lifting the mop out of the water and wringing it with one hand. "You know… one moment I was wandering around St Petersburg with Pooka, the next I was dragged off the street and dumped here."

"Aw, Anya..." Bartok said sadly. He turned to Tidus. "I found her first in an alleyway and I felt real sorry for her. I couldn't leave her like that just lying there. And there were shadows and that little Pooka was nowhere to be found. Say, I wonder what happened to the little fella."

"I was supposed to be getting a job," Anya continued as if Bartok had never interjected. "Well, I got one alright…"

She slapped the mop onto the floor and started to mop. Tidus watched the dismal strokes of the mop, long and slow and Anya's clogs clacked slightly against the wooden floor. Then, out of the blue, the piercing screech of another young woman echoed through the store:

"Anya! I'm cold! Turn on the boiler now!"

She sighed and leaned her mop against the wall, turning and walking through a door beside the shelves of sewing equipment. Tidus hadn't noticed it since it was coloured the same creamy white as the walls.

"Who was that?" Tidus whispered as though he was afraid to be heard by the screeching woman.

"That's just Odile," Bartok grumbled. "And boy-o-boy, is she a meanie. She and her dad are the rotten people who own this shop but they hardly do anything. Well, her daddy hardly does anything but Odile does _nothing_. Meanwhile, Anya and I are being forced to do all the busy work under threat of death by magic electric laser. I've actually seen someone get fried by one of them before and trust me, you don't wanna get fried by one of them."

"Make it hotter!" Odile screamed.

"And Anya has to take orders from them as well?" Tidus guessed.

"Yeah. Odile really keeps her on her toes. Anya's only been here for a year and she's starting to look like she's been slaving away for ten."

Tidus heard a small squeaky growl and looked down. There was a mouse hole in the corner between the counter and the wall and a few mice wearing clothes and caps had scampered out.

"It's too hot!" Odile yelled.

"Don't you just hate that Odile?" said a male mouse wearing a red shirt and an orange jacket.

"Oh, I hear you Jaq," Bartok replied. "I have never had the displeasure of meeting any meaner, nastier girl than Odile."

"You said it, didn't he Gus?" Jaq agreed, turning to a fatter mouse in a green shirt.

"I said it's too hot! Turn it down!" Odile continued to demand from somewhere upstairs.

"Uh-huh," Gus nodded. "Why... why one o' these days I oughta-"

"Oh come off-a it," said a female mouse wearing a yellow dress with an apron and a bow on her tail. "Odile's a big, scary witch-lady and we're just itty-bitty mice."

"They treat her like the ugly stepsisters treated poor Cinderelly," Jaq added.

Anya's footsteps thumped as she stomped back up to the shop. She burst in through the door with fresh soot smeared on her pinafore and picked up the mop again, washing the floor furiously.

"She doesn't sound like a nice person," Tidus piped up, even though speaking right now sounded awkward to him.

"Of course she's not," Anya replied, "Odile and her father, Rothbart, were exiled from their world for their evil deeds. That's why they came here."

"She's such a grouch!" Jaq growled. "Anya can't even make herself a pretty dress."

"Jaq!" Anya scolded, confirming a passing thought of Tidus' that she could hear the mice speaking too and that he wasn't crazy.

"You're making a dress?" Tidus asked.

"No… I mean, I was going to try but I gave up," Anya admitted. "I wouldn't have anywhere to wear it anyway."

"Anya can wear it to the party when she gets home," said a female mouse wearing pink – in fact, all the female mice were wearing exactly the same outfit but in varying colours.

"There's no party," Anya denied. Tidus gave her an inquisitive look so she gave an explanation: "before the storm came and sucked up my world, I was wandering around in the old palace in St Petersburg and I saw a portrait of the royal family. One of the little girls looked almost exactly like me. At the time there was also this rumour going around that the Romanov family wasn't completely dead and some Grand Duchess or whatever in Paris was looking for a lost princess who somehow hadn't died… and since coming here, I had this romantic thought that maybe that lost princess was the girl in picture who looked like me. But it was probably just a coincidence. There's going to be no party when I get home, I'm just going to go up north and get a job at a dock like I was supposed to."

Tidus didn't quite see the whole picture with some of the details missing but he could understand the overlying point of it.

"I think Anya can be the princess," said a female mouse in green.

"And you're gonna meet the duchess," Gus added. "Dressed up all pretty."

"Then she'll know you're the lost princess," Jaq continued.

Bartok shrugged. "You never know, it could be worth a shot in the end. Even if it turns out you're not the girl you'll be in Paris. Think of all the things you could do in Paris!"

Anya just shook her head. Tidus moved out of the way for her as she came by to mop. He sat on the bench next to Bartok to keep off the floor while it was wet.

"Anya," came a low rumble from the second storey. "Haven't you finished mopping the shop yet? You need to finish the orders!"

"And clean the windows!" Odile screeched. "From the outside too! They're filthy!"

"From the outside?!" the mice and the bat exclaimed in unison.

"Anya can't clean the windows from the outside! She'll have her heart stolen," Bartok said.

"That's not fair," said that female mouse wearing yellow.

Anya just sighed. "I'm getting there," she answered weakly, far too softly to be heard from upstairs. She finished mopping the floor and picked up the pail. She went back behind the creamy white door, leaving it to swing shut on its own.

"They make her sew the orders as well?" Tidus asked. "But she's already doing all the maid work-"

"Anya, start our dinner!" Odile ordered. "Otherwise it'll get late. Hurry up!"

"She wasn't too good at it when she was first put to it," Bartok told him. "She could stitch things up and sew on patches but she didn't know how to do a professional job. It was really rough for her but she got through it. She can even use the sewing machine and everything. But that contraption broke the other week and we're too scared of the shadows to take it to the Gizmo Shop."

"Hey, I work at the Gizmo Shop. When I go back I can take it there for you," Tidus offered.

"You'd do that?" Bartok asked in awe, almost as if he didn't believe it.

"Sure."

"Man, you don't know how much that means to us."

"It's not a problem, um…" Tidus wasn't sure how to ask this but he really wanted to: "how long did it take Anya to learn how to do a professional job?"

"It was a few weeks," Bartok replied. "I mean, that is still a pretty top notch effort, since she was thrown in the deep end and all, but she put her heart into it and she was determined not to get lasered and she pulled it off."

"Anya, when you finish with those windows make sure to clean the bathrooms too," Rothbart called down to her.

"What the heck!" Tidus exclaimed. "She's barely even able to start the first task and they've given her three more to do! How is she supposed to finish all of that in one night?"

"Ha! Tell me about it!" Bartok snorted and started a little song:

_"Anya, Anya, Anya, Anya,_   
_All you hear is 'Anya',_   
_From the moment you get up_   
_'Til the shades of night are falling_   
_There isn't any letup_   
_I hear them calling, calling:_   
_Go up and do the attic_   
_And go down and do the cellar,_   
_You can do them both together,_   
_Anya! Anya!"_

Jaq continued the song in a grumble:

_"Every time she'd find a minute_   
_That's the time that they begin it_   
_Yelling Anya, Anya, Anya…"_

"Anya! Where's my dinner?" Odile interrupted. "Anya!"

"Ya see?" Jaq said, gesturing to the ceiling:

_"Anya, Anya! Anya, Anya!_   
_Night and Day it's 'Anya! Anya!_   
_Heat the boiler, fix the breakfast,_   
_Wash the dishes, do the mopping'."_

The female mice added:

_"And the sweeping and the dusting,  
They always keep her hopping."_

Jaq nodded:

_"She goes around in circles 'til she's very, very dizzy_   
_Still they holler:_   
_Keep-a-busy, Anya, Anya."_

"That sounds tough," Tidus said putting his elbow on his knee and leaning his head in his palm, suddenly feeling bad about running from the Gizmo Shop the way he did. Foreman Ivory was pushy but he wasn't cruel.

"I wish we coulda helped her someways," Gus said.

Tidus nodded. He wished he could help her too. He supposed he could thank her for giving him some new hope: that he would be a good tinkerman somehow. He'd be able to fix things with ease like Pippi and Miley seemed to. If only there was something he could do other than try to fix the sewing machine. He began to smile and lifted his head as a brilliant idea came to him.

"Hey, why don't we try to take some of the load off her back?" Tidus suggested. "We'll do the windows for her!"

"That sounds like job for the men!" Jaq squeaked excitedly, puffing his chest out like he was a big, strong mouse.

"And the women can do the orders," suggested the female mouse in pink.

"Great! Two birds with one stone," Tidus grinned.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! That sounds like a good idea," Bartok interjected, "but there's still the fact that you've gotta do the outside as well as the inside and there are monsters out there."

"Maybe I can fight them," Tidus said. "I practiced sword fighting with my friends on my island so if I had some kind of weapon I could fight them off while you guys did the windows."

"Only magic weapons hurt 'em," Gus said.

"Yeah, and the only magic weapons in the shop belong to Rothbart," Jaq added.

"Does he have a magical sword?" Tidus asked.

"Oh yeah," Gus answered.

"But he keeps it locked up in a special cupboard," a female mouse in blue reminded them. "We're gonna need the key."

"Don't you have the keys, Bartok?" Tidus turned to the bat.

"I don't have _that_ key," Bartok shook his head. "Rothbart keeps all of his special keys in a special box in his room – I've seen it before. If there's something he doesn't want anyone else to have, he locks it up and puts the key away in his special box."

"And let me guess: the special box has a special key too?"

"Yep, Odile looks after that. She wears it around her neck on a chain all day and all night. But we might be able to trick her into taking it off. She's really vain."

Tidus grinned. He knew all about what Bartok was talking about – having female friends with a flair for accessory-making didn't count for nothing. "So if we give her something that will clash with her accessories she might take the accessories off in favour of ones that compliment. Hey, do you mice think that you could find some jewels and chains to make a new necklace? It doesn't matter if they're fake so long as they end up looking pretty."

"Count on us," the mice all replied in unison, doing a salute before scurrying back into their mouse hole.

"Bartok, are there tools around here that I can use?"

Bartok rubbed his chin. "There are jewellery making tools in the sewing room where all the orders are made."

"That's perfect! Show me where those tools are. I _think_ I might be able to make this necklace."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Anastasia (Anya): from the Don Bluth and Gary Goldman movie 'Anastasia'. Again, it's not Disney but it's good and I thought it would fit. Also - fun fact - Don Bluth and Gary Goldman were both former employees of Disney (that is such a tenuous link though... forget it, she's here because I want her to be, that's all that matters).
> 
> Bartok: Also from 'Anastasia'! He's one of my favourite comic relief characters ever, he even got a spin-off movie for being so funny and adorable.
> 
> Rothbart and Odile: the villains from 'Swan Lake'. Rothbart is the evil sorcerer and Odile is better known as the Black Swan. There are so many modern media versions of Swan Lake and therefore many different versions and interpretations of their characters, but I'm ignoring all of them and using the ballet as my chief source of inspiration for them. (Again, it's not Disney but I'm probably in too deep after Pippi Longstocking anyway).
> 
> Jaq, Gus and the mice: They actually are Disney (yay)! They're initially Cinderella's only friends in her bleak world at the beginning of Disney's 'Cinderella' movie.
> 
> Song: is 'The Work Song' from 'Cinderella', or at least part of it.


	5. Miss Vanity

Tidus had never even attempted to make a piece of jewellery before and he couldn't even fix a typewriter, so he had no idea how this idea was really going to work. The mice returned carrying beads, jewels, and chains that they'd found around the shop and Bartok brought the necessary tools for the delicate art of jewellery making. Now Tidus had to figure out how to make it all fit together, trying to think of Selphie and Kairi and delicate way they handled the pliers and crimps when they put together bracelets and necklaces. It was even more irritating when Rothbart or Odile would scream at Anya – they kept it up for a while, making sure that Anya couldn't even get started with the first few jobs she'd been handed.

An hour hadn't even passed and Tidus crimped the chain to the hooks. He sat back and admired what he'd done on the shop counter. Considering that he'd had no instructions, he'd done a lot better than he'd fared with the typewriter. The new necklace was imperfect. The wire that held the beads together was a little bit bent in some places and wonky in others. In places where the wire was wrapped around itself the coils were uneven. All in all, it was incredibly unprofessional, but the shiny beads and jewels covered the imperfections well enough. The only task now was to see if it would work on Odile.

Tidus handed the necklace to Jaq, who scurried into his mouse hole and climbed the foundations and pipes in the walls. He emerged through a widened crack in Odile's bedroom wall, just behind her vanity. The vanity was next to a window with a long, green curtain that draped all the way to the floor. Jaq climbed the curtain and swung onto the tabletop of the vanity. He looked around the room and spotted a short but slim girl standing on the other side of the room, completely engrossed in her own reflection in a full length mirror in the corner (placed conveniently near her wardrobe). Her dark hair hung loosely down to her shoulder blades as she tried out various poses and methods of hair flipping in a blue, strapless evening gown that was complete with sequins and a chiffon overskirt. Jaq placed the necklace in the middle of the vanity where Odile would definitely see it and then hid behind a large pot of face powder.

Odile sighed. "I knew it; I look absolutely charming in this dress. I'm so beautiful! Now, let's see if I have any jewellery that will go nicely with my dress."

She turned around, heading straight for her vanity. Jaq crouched to make himself even smaller and grabbed his tail. Odile caught sight of the shiny beads and stared at the tabletop with wide eyes. "I never knew I had this." She picked up Tidus' hand-made necklace, holding up and examining it. "It's wonderfully shiny and I think it may be just the right colour to go with my dress and bring out the radiance of my beautiful face."

Jaq chanced a glance from behind the powder pot. He could see it: the key she wore around her neck. It was an average-sized key, dull black in colour. Odile fastened the clasp of the new necklace around her neck and looked into her vanity mirror, scrutinising her own appearance.

"It's such a lovely necklace and it goes so well with my beautiful dress and my radiant face but I can't have two centrepieces around my neck."

Jaq held his breath when she reached back to unfasten a clasp. He thought for a moment that she might be unclasping the new necklace but instead she unclasped the chain with the key and put it down on the vanity, turning around to admire herself in the full length mirror once again. He sighed with relief and while she was distracted he darted out to grab the key, slid down the curtain and ran across the room, keeping a close eye on Odile but she never looked away from her own reflection. He squeezed through the gap beneath the door and dashed behind a chest of drawers in the hallway. Bartok stood at the top and looked over the edge.

"Did you get the key?" he whispered.

Jaq waved it above his head.

"Good, now we just gotta wait until Rothbart leaves. He should be going to his study to sort out his bills and paperwork really soon." Bartok ducked behind a vase when he heard the creak of an opening door. The ornate brown door beside the chest of drawers was pushed open with slow deliberation and out stepped a tall, thin old man with a wide, owlish face. He paid no notice to the two hiding creatures and headed down the hall to a door at the end. He entered it and shut it firmly behind him.

"We're in luck!" Bartok hissed, flying out from behind the vase and landing next to the door. "He didn't shut it properly."

Mustering all of the strength he had in his tiny bat body, Bartok widened the opening a little and hopped in, followed by Jaq dragging the key behind him. Once inside the plain room, Bartok took the key and flew up to the dresser where a small but ornate black box was sitting, fastened shut with a black metal padlock shaped like the head of a devil. It was enchanted to prevent theft or breaking but with the right key the box wouldn't make a fuss. The key slotted into the keyhole in the devil's mouth perfectly and unlocked the box with a tiny click. Bartok flicked the lid open and looked inside. There were all sorts of interestingly shaped keys inside, some coloured, some rusty, and some dull. Bartok rifled through them all until he found a red key with a lion's face and squarish teeth.

"You got it!" Jaq cheered when Bartok held up the key. "But where you gotta put it?"

They both looked around.

"Hm..." Bartok muttered. "If I was a sword, where would my master hide me?" His eyes fell upon a wide chest of drawers with wide, thin drawers. Each drawer had its own keyhole. "There!"

He flapped over to it. Trying the key in each lock before he finally found it to work on the bottom drawer. It was difficult since he was so small but he managed to open the drawer just enough to slip through. It was too dark in the drawer to see what he was pulling out. It was heavy, though. He couldn't pull it all the way, so he balanced the tip on the edge of the drawer and pushed it. It fell out with a loud clatter. Bartok and Jaq both sucked in a breath.

"Anya! What was that noise?" Odile screeched.

"We're in trouble!" Bartok exclaimed.

"Quick! Put the key back!" Jaq hissed. "I'll hide the sword."

Jaq began to pull by the hilt with all of his might. Bartok leaned against the drawer with all of his weight, kicking against the air until he finally had it closed. He locked it – being meticulous with detail as he had to be – and flew back to the black box, depositing the red key and relocking the box with the black key. He made a mad rush for the chest of drawers, pushing the tip of the sword into the shadows beneath it just as footsteps were approaching. They hid under the furniture, watching the floor.

Rothbart pulled the door to his room further ajar. He looked around with narrowed eyes. He was sure he usually made sure his door was closed firmly. Jaq and Bartok watched with baited breath as he walked across the room to his dresser, checking the lock of his special box. He made his way around the room, checking his locked drawers and his cupboard. Satisfied that nothing was out of the ordinary, he left, closing the door firmly behind him.

Jaq and Bartok both released the breath they'd been holding simultaneously. Jaq began the laborious task of dragging the sword out of its hiding place while Bartok flew out into the open and latched onto the doorknob, trying to turn it even though it was almost as big as he was. He was able to turn it fully by the time Jaq reached the door. Jaq leaned against the wood, unintentionally pushing it open. It swung freely. Bartok felt his heart almost stop. He flapped as hard as he could with his toes clasping the doorknob. It stopped only centimetres short of banging into the wall. Bartok resisted the temptation to drop to the ground with a thud.

Jaq heaved with all of his might to bring the sword to the edge of the stairs. He waved down to the bottom of the stairs where Tidus was waiting. He might have been able to complete the mission himself but he was too big a target and would find it more difficult to hide in a tight situation. He took his boots off and crept up the stairs as silently as possible. He looked at the sword Jaq and Bartok had taken. It was rather ordinary: a straight blade with a straight cross-guard that had a small ring for a pommel. The most interesting things about this sword were that a soft piece of red fabric was knotted through the ring and the blade bubbled and flowed as though it was made of water.

"Well, I guess I can't complain if it doesn't look that cool," Tidus murmured. "It looks magical and that's good enough to defeat the monsters."

He grabbed the sword by the hilt and tip-toed back down the stairs. Bartok dropped the box key back into Jaq's hands. The mouse darted off to Odile's bedroom again while Bartok attempted to close Rothbart's bedroom door as quietly as possible. Jaq slipped back under the door and darted across the room, unnoticed again since Odile was now too busy matching shoes to her outfit. She hadn't even realised the key had been stolen. Jaq made the climb to the top of her vanity, replaced the key and climbed back down. He ducked into the crack and made his way through the walls to the front of the store. Bartok left the door only slightly ajar but by looking at it one wouldn't be able to tell. He flew back downstairs, flooded with relief and a sense of accomplishment.

At the front of the shop Tidus was putting his shoes back on with the sword leaning against the counter. Several buckets of soapy water were already prepared with washcloths and sponges nearby. The mice were now filling up balloons with helium that had been stored in the basement with other large and festive items under a sign labelling them as 'Party Hire'. Bartok landed on the counter.

"What's with the balloons?" he asked.

"We're gonna use them to fly up to the windows at the top," Tidus explained. "And check this out!"

Tidus went behind the counter and pulled out something interesting: a spring board. At the moment it was locked in position but when the bar was removed it bounced up with a firm spring. "I bet I can use this out there while I'm fighting. Who knows, there might be flying shadow monsters too." He turned to all of the mice. "Are you guys ready?"

"We're ready!" they chorused.

"Alright! Let's clean those windows."


	6. The Price of Gratitude

Tidus opened the front door a crack and peered out into the district. He pushed the door open a little bit – just enough so that the mice could push their buckets and colourful helium balloons through – and unlatched the chain lock on the cage door. He flung it open and gestured for the mice to move quickly.

"Hurry up! We gotta get in position before the shadows show up… and mind the step," he whispered to them.

The mice scurried out, their buckets nearly floating away with the amount of helium balloons tied to the bucket handles. The only thing keeping them close to the ground were the bags full of marbles and beads acting like sandbags. Tidus dragged his springboard out too, flicking the latch so that it sprung into the open position. He gripped the handle of his watery sword and put his guard up. He had no idea if his juvenile tactics would work against the shadow monsters but he figured he'd probably be better than Selphie or Sora. At least he had some impressive manoeuvres. Selphie and Sora treated their toys like battleaxes. Tidus chuckled at the thought of either of them being in his shoes right now. He blinked and shook his head, gripping his sword a little tighter. Now wasn't the time to reminisce. The shadow monsters might arrive at any minute, sensing a large group of hearts straying from safety.

"Alright," Tidus commanded. "Everybody ready? Just stick to the plan and work from the bottom up."

"Right!" the mice chorused, dropping their first sandbags. The buckets rose higher and the mice dunked sponges and bathroom scrubbing brushes that they had tied to sticks into their buckets and started cleaning. The soap bubbles floated off the windows, shining colourfully like little spherical rainbows in the lights from the shop. Then when the panes had been cleaned a bungee jumper using a piece of elastic as their bungee leaped from the floating bucket with a rubber strip to scrape the soap and water away, leaving a crystal clear surface that didn't compare to the foggy, gritty view it once had.

The shop window panes were nearly finished and it would soon be time to drop the second lot of sandbags to ascend to the second floor. The myriad of bubbles still shone in the artificial light, making Tidus stop in awe. He stared at them as if lulled into a dozy trance but snapped back to reality when one of them darkened.

His eyes widened and he focused on the real world in time to see one of those helmeted shadow monsters leap for one of the buckets. Tidus dashed forward. He struck at it with his sword, sending it off its course. It crashed to the ground with a heavy clank. As if that was the cue, several more of them suddenly appeared from dark portals. They could sense which heart was the strongest and closed in on it: Tidus.

The sword was long enough to parry three attacks at once and that left one more. Tidus jumped forward and slashed down on one foe, long and even. The other four dived for him. He rolled out of the way and let them crash into each other. While they were all stuck together by their helmets, Tidus took the opportunity to try the effectiveness of one of his special moves. He rushed towards them and did a practiced double flip, slicing them with a double, circular cut. They were thrown apart. One had taken significantly more damage and its body was beginning to break. Tidus picked on that one, stabbing it mercilessly in the chest where the heart motif was. Its body dissipated into black smoke.

He turned around to the sound of clanking behind him. The four still standing lunged for him. Tidus leaped over the top of them and rolled to safety. One of them turned around quickly and charged. He batted it out of the way easily. The others followed the same mindless tactic, not following any form of coherent teamwork. Tidus could easily beat them away from him with the blade but he wasn't used to being the one who was ganged up on. He spied one that had landed furthest from the others and chose to focus his efforts on that one for a while. He dashed to it, using his speed to reinforce the power of his strike, felling the monster instantly. The three remaining foolishly charged again. Tidus kicked the first two out of the way and delivered a three strike combo to the third that finally finished it.

"Tidus! Help!" a tiny mouse voice cried from above.

Tidus looked up. Three dark portals had opened and out of them flew three monsters that looked nearly exactly the same as the helmeted soldiers but wearing heavy brown boots, goggles, brown caps with chopper blades on them, and wings. The two on the ground had already recovered and were running towards him and smaller Shadows were rising out of the pavement. Tidus beat away one of the Soldiers and stabbed in other in the head through the open visor. He pulled downwards. Its dark body broke like the ones before it that had fallen.

Ignoring the others that weren't close enough to be an immediate danger, Tidus rushed to the springboard. He jumped on it hard, pushing as much force as he could into the spring mechanism. He shot up like a bottle rocket and snagged one of the flying soldiers with the edge of his blade, diverting their attention before they could attack the mice. They flapped away from him as he descended and landed on the roof. Then they surrounded him.

Tidus backed up, trying to find more steady ground. One of them charged in for an attack. Tidus blocked it, feeling the power behind it. It was a heavy blow; much stronger than the Soldiers. He attempted to counter but it flitted out of the way. From behind one charged at him and knocked him to the roof tiles. It backed away almost immediately as though expecting a reaction. Tidus pushed himself to his feet again. He waited for one of them to charge an attack at him again and this time he ducked. He pointed his sword up and thrust it into the creature's stomach. It flapped hard to get away from the weapon but the damage had been done. It was starting to break up with flecks of darkness peeling off its body in wisps. The others didn't seem affected by this; they continued their cautious method of attack.

As one came back for another charge, Tidus parried the blow and quickly redirected his swing to slash at the monster. He strung as many hits together as he possibly could before the shadow monster managed to slip away but it was on the verge of destruction too. Behind him the remaining one which he'd turned his back on was flexing its claws, ready for another surprise attack. It didn't expect to have a sandbag dropped on its head. A bucket floating with balloons had flown above it. The mice had now crawled up to the handle and Jaq was among them.

"Everybody jump!" he commanded. He and the mice all leaped off the handle and grabbed onto one side of the bucket. They closed their eyes and held their breath as the soapy water poured over them and over the Heartless. It was hardly affected since it was wearing goggles, but having its attention turned away from Tidus gave the blond enough time and a wide opening to attack and destroy it. The mice let go of the bucket since it was now significantly lighter and was floating away uncontrollably. They landed on Tidus' head and shoulders.

"Are you guys okay?" Tidus asked the sodden rodents.

"We're fine," said a small one in a green shirt.

"What about the others?"

"We gots the windows all finished," Jaq reported, "so we're cutting the strings. Just thought we oughta make sure you're okay, though."

"You're going down?!" Tidus exclaimed, remembering the hoards of shadow creatures still on the road in front of the store. He looked over the edge to get an aim for his springboard. "Hold onto me really tight, okay? We're going to go really, really fast."

The two injured Air Soldiers spied their opponent preparing to escape and zipped in for another heavy attack. Tidus saw them both easily and jumped to avoid them. They collided into each other. Tidus held the sword's hilt with both hands and forced his body to turn for a spinning attack. He hit both of the vulnerable shadow creatures, ultimately defeating them.

They entered freefall towards the springboard. Tidus landed on his feet and jumped off it, swinging down on a small Shadow and destroying it immediately. He swatted at the one next to it. The shadow creatures were swarming in with greater numbers, appearing from portals and crawling out of the shadows. Tidus panicked. He was sure he couldn't fight this many creatures. He grabbed the steadily descending buckets by their handles as he ran back to the front door of the shop. The shadow monsters surged, trying to beat him to it. He pulled the cage doors closed and ripped open the front door. The buckets were thrown in first. Tidus leaped in after them and slammed the door, feeling his heart beating furiously against his ribcage.

Outside, a couple of Heartless, curious about the springboard, opened up a portal and abducted it to their world of darkness.

Inside, the tense atmosphere began to lift as the panicked and panting window-washers caught their breath. As the success of their mission also caught up with him, Tidus broke into a huge grin. He pumped his fist into the air a let out a loud whoop of victory.

"Anya! What was that noise?!" Odile screeched, making Tidus cringe.

"We done it!" Gus exclaimed, jumping up and down and embracing a neighbouring mouse tightly. "We helped Anya good!"

"Yeah, but look what else we done," another mouse added, pointing to the floor. Tidus' face fell when he saw the soapy water mess that had been created in the shop in his haste to get the mice back in quickly.

"Anya just cleaned that…" he muttered guiltily. He gulped down his apprehension and rolled up his sleeves. "Well, I guess I'll have to fix this myself. You guys won't need my help to do the windows inside, right? There aren't any shadow creatures in this building."

"You can count on us!" Jaq proclaimed.

"Good on ya, sports," Bartok congratulated while locking the door as a precaution. "And I'll take the inventory while you're doing that."

Tidus didn't miss the implication of that and grabbed the little white bat by the foot. "Nice try, Bartok. You have to go and help them."

The mice pushed their buckets away to start their indoors cleaning. Tidus headed around the counter to the small area behind the shop. In this small space there was bedding, food and water for the spaniel, which was curled up in its basket. It looked up as Tidus passed it heading towards a narrow stairway that led to the basement where he would be able to find a mop. It would also be an appropriate place to hide the sword until they had enough time to put it back.

It was dark downstairs. Tidus fumbled around until his hand bumped a piece of string hanging from the ceiling. He pulled it and the light came on. There were even more, larger rolls of fabric down here with extra mannequins, busts, and tape measures. To his disgust, he also noticed that there was a sagging cot in the corner with old sheets surrounded by the barest of necessities: a small, cracked mirror, a basin and washcloth, and a trunk filled with more old and ragged clothing.

In the middle of it all was a table with a contraption covered with a sheet of old linen. Curious about it, Tidus removed the linen and found a machine with a needle attached and a wheel upon which a piece of thread from the spool spun. It was a treadle machine. He found a long wooden pedal under the table connected to another wheel at the end of the machine by a sturdy but slight piece of rope. Stepping on the pedal and working it made the wheel spin and the needle move up and down. It was accompanied by the unhealthy sounds of banging and grinding. The string threaded through the needle hole uselessly. It was then that Tidus realised he'd seen a machine like this before, maybe just once. Didn't Sora's mother have something like this? This must have been the broken sewing machine that Bartok told him about.

Setting the sword down behind some large rolls of fabric and intending to find a mop, Tidus noticed a fairly large case. Forgetting the mop for a moment, he pulled the case away from the wall and opened it. It must have been weighty by itself because the thing was empty. There were little compartments lined with velvet for storage and safe keeping. Some of them were shaped like wheels and half cylinders. Suddenly Tidus had an idea. Removing the spool and thread from the sewing machine, he began to experiment with what he could and couldn't unscrew, taking the sewing machine off its desk and pulling the treadle apart bit by bit. All the parts fit perfectly into certain compartments. Delighted that he'd figured this out, Tidus put away the rest of the machine, leaving the mopping for later.

* * *

Anya trudged back down the stairs to the shop. She was exhausted already but there was still more that she was expected to do. The orders would probably take all night and she had no idea what she was going to do about the windows. With a tired sigh she decided that she might start with the windows first. Using the same bucket and rag she used for wiping the furniture upstairs, Anya walked past the orders on their busts and mannequins, paying no mind to them since she was already too daunted by her task. She opened the almost invisible doors to the display cases where their products were put on demonstration in the windows. Taking one look, she gaped. She rubbed her eyes and looked again but the window was still crystal clean. She shut the door and turned around. All of the dresses, suits, skirts, and blouses that had been ordered were somehow miraculously finished.

Unsure of what had happened she walked quickly through the door to the front of the store. The floor was clean and Tidus was heaving a case towards the door. Bartok was sitting on the counter as he normally was and all of the friendly mice that lived in the walls were standing near their mouse hole. Even more shocking was a sword with a blade of water lying across the counter that Anya was sure must have belonged to Rothbart.

"Anya, you're back," Tidus remarked. "I wasn't sure if I'd get to see you before I went. I'm really supposed to be at the hostel and I bet everyone's worried about me by now."

"Tidus, what happened?" Anya asked. "The windows… and… and the orders and… is that our sewing machine?"

"Tidus is gonna fix it for us," Bartok explained. "He works at that big, ol' Gizmo Shop across the square."

"But everything else...!"

"We did it for you," Tidus replied.

"We did the windows," Jaq said proudly.

"And we did the sewing," the female mice chimed in chorus.

"I just thought that you needed some help around here," Tidus elaborated. "And it would be too dangerous for you to clean the outside of the windows by yourself."

Anya was wide-eyed and too slack-jawed to make a real response. She pointed to the sword on the counter with a questioning but still disbelieving expression.

"Yeah, I used that to keep the shadow monsters away while the mice did the cleaning. But I don't need it anymore so you'll have to get it back to Rothbart somehow without him noticing."

Anya looked off distantly into space for a moment, thinking deeply. She smiled and took the sword off the counter, putting the hilt in Tidus' free hand. Tidus blinked and looked at her questioningly.

"It sounds like it'll be too much trouble to return it," she told him, "so why don't you just keep it? Besides, if he didn't notice you taking it, why should he even assume it's gone? And you will need it to face the monsters out in Second District."

Tidus closed his hand more securely around the hilt. "Why?" he asked softly.

It took him by surprise when she threw her arms around his shoulders and he nearly fell backwards but caught himself. "Thank-you!" she said. Tidus thought he heard a small sob. "No one's ever been so kind to me."

She let go and gazed at him with slightly teary eyes. "You take care, okay?" She patted him on the shoulder.

Tidus smiled broadly. "You bet. But you keep holding onto hope too, okay? We're not gonna be here forever."

"I hope so," Anya smiled, opening the door for him.

"I'll get this fixed for you as soon as possible," Tidus promised, lifting the case and starting to leave out the door. "See ya."

The mice farewelled in unison and Bartok waved. Tidus left the cage around the store's door and started back on his way to the Gizmo shop. He was worried by his own words. There was no known way to restore a world that had been lost to the darkness. He didn't know how he could guarantee that they wouldn't be here forever.

Oh, but he had hope. He steeled his conviction that he would one day see all of his friends again together on their island and walked forward.


	7. From the Sky

Tidus kept the sword in one hand as he walked through Second District, aware that the shadow creatures could jump out at any time. It would also be harder to fight with the heavy sewing machine in his possession.

A pin dropped in the silent street. It startled Tidus as he was passing the hotel, making him pause and lift the sword defensively, looking around for any sign of an enemy. He looked over the edge of the path. Beneath him was a wooden bench. Something small and metal was lying beside it but Tidus would not have seen it if it wasn't for the little golden light that suddenly appeared from underneath the bench to pick it up. Curiosity piqued, Tidus leaped over the edge of the street down into the square, landing in front of the bench. He bent down to take a look.

Whatever that golden thing was he must have frightened it. It was backed up against the wall. A trail of golden, glowing glitter showed where it had been and in front of it was an incomplete toy. The chassis was a blue penguin split into two pieces on either side of the mechanism that was being worked on. Some of the gears and the winder were still out of place.

Tidus let go of the sewing machine case and crawled under the bench to get a closer look at the golden light. As he got closer, a human figure could be made out amongst the gold and glitter. The little human had wings and when Tidus looked even closer he could make out that she was a blonde girl, wearing a little green dress and green slippers with white pom-poms. She had a pouty look on her face, even when her expression was wide-eyed in surprise. Tidus smiled at her to try to be reassuring.

"Hi there. Don't worry, I won't eat you or anything," he said. The tiny girl began to edge away. "Honestly! I just want to know what you are."

The girl raised an eyebrow. She turned her side to Tidus and jerked her thumb in the direction of her wings as if that was an obvious enough clue. Tidus blinked, realising how stupid he had just been. Yet at the same time he couldn't believe it.

"Wait… a fairy? No way!"

The girl put her hands on her hips and nodded.

"Okay, so let's just say you are a fairy, what are you doing down here? Don't you know there are shadow monsters around?"

The fairy cocked her head in confusion and shook her head. She then picked up a gear, making a point of showing it to him and hovered back to the toy's mechanism. She studied it a bit before deducing that she had the wrong piece and picked up another one, sliding it into place. She put all of the gears back and picked up one half of the chassis. She slipped the winder into place through the hole in that half, made sure everything was connected properly and then lifted the second half of the chassis. She snapped the two pieces together. Tidus blinked.

"Whoa! You fixed it so easily! Does it work?"

The fairy tapped on the winder as though inviting Tidus to try it out. So he picked up the toy and turned the winder as far as it would go. When he let it loose, the penguin began to walk. Tidus marvelled at it.

"It really is fixed! You're awesome! Hey, do you think you could help me out a bit? I've been working at this big building over here; the Gizmo Shop," Tidus jerked his head in the direction of the shop, "and I can't seem to fix anything. Maybe you can give me some pointers."

The fairy gasped and took a step back, holding her hands in front of her mouth. Tidus blinked. "Sorry, I didn't realise you didn't like the Gizmo Shop. Why though?"

The fairy shook her head and pointed behind him. He turned around. A helmeted shadow monster stood poised above him ready to strike with its bright red claws. Tidus' heart nearly stopped in the face of an imminent attack he would never be able to dodge. Suddenly a stream of gold shot past his shoulder and slammed into the Soldier's face. Tidus saw an opening to pick up his sword and stab it through the Soldier's body. Rising to his feet he swung it around a few times until it was flung from his sword to the wall on the other side of the square. More shadows began to rise. Tidus cursed himself for getting so relaxed. He grabbed the sewing machine case and got into his battle stance.

Along with the Shadows, Air Soldiers and the Soldiers three much, much larger Heartless appeared. They had large, round bodies and tiny heads with little tin hats, huge and thick arms with broken cuffs on their wrists, and tiny legs. Tidus gaped at their sheer size. He steeled himself – gripping his sword and the case a little tighter – and lunged forward to strike one on the belly. The attack bounced off harmlessly. The large-bodied creature lifted a hand to scratch its chin. The numbers had risen to a swarm and with three new enemies that seemed indestructible Tidus had no idea what do to.

The fairy flitted back and forth, contemplating fleeing. It would be terrible for her to get involved with such big, scary monsters but she would be leaving the blond boy all alone with them too. Finally, she made up her mind. She flew directly over him and shook a load of fairy dust from her wings and body onto him. Tidus nearly freaked out when what appeared to be sand started to pour all over him. A Shadow leaped for him from behind, out of his notice. The fairy dived in and grabbed as much of Tidus' hair as she could and lifted him into the sky as if he was weightless. Tidus cried out in alarm when all of a sudden he was shooting into the air. The Heartless on the ground could do nothing about it but the Air Soldiers pursued.

The fairy girl turned back briefly to check if they were following and tried to put on a little more speed. The buildings were becoming smaller and smaller below them. An Air Soldier caught up to them ahead of the others, preparing for what Tidus knew was a hard-hitting tackle. He pulled his sword arm back and waited for the shadow monster to reach them first. He swung his sword into the creature's head, using momentum from the case to get in two kicks and another sweeping cut from the sword. He ripped his hair out of the fairy's grasp in the process and tipped himself up the other way. Realising that he was in the air, Tidus panicked. Luckily, he was caught before he could fall. The fairy grabbed a shoelace and continued to soar upwards towards the stars. The atmosphere got thinner and thinner until even the shadow monsters couldn't handle the significant drop in pressure. It dropped back, disappearing into its dark portal.

Tidus tried to catch his breath but it was a bit hard with the sparse oxygen. He looked around, wide-eyed with bewilderment at what was really going on around him. "I'm in the air?" he asked himself, staring down at the town far below him. The fairy let go of his lace, feeling that he was ready. "Wow… I'm really flying!"

He righted himself and looked at the case. At the moment it felt like nothing. He tossed it up into the air. It spun a little bit but hovered on its own. "This is so cool!"

He caught the case, still marvelling at the fact that it seemed to weigh nothing. He tried to go higher and did a back flip, making himself dizzy with the simultaneous sensation of flying and spinning. The night sky was completely clear of clouds and Tidus could see Traverse Town below him stretching for miles. One end met the inky sea, the other met green pastures and meadows. Even further in the distance from such a high point of view a fuzzy row of trees could be seen marking the beginnings of a forest. Pillars of warm smoke rose from some of the industries and houses. He took off in a random direction. The wind rushed by, streaming all over his body. Tidus grinned, closing his eyes against the wind. The golden fairy followed, leaving a jet stream of fairy dust wherever she went.

Perhaps he had been enjoying himself too much again; a sudden hard impact followed by a shriek from what sounded like a young girl nearly knocked him out of the sky. Tidus fell back trying to shake the dizziness out of his head but that just made it worse.

"What do you think you're doing flying around so recklessly like that?! One of us could have been badly hurt!"

"I'm sorry," Tidus replied, opening his eyes even though his head was still spinning. His vision slowly whirled back into focus and he finally saw what – more like who – he had collided with. It was a young girl in a plain black dress with short brown hair kept out of her face by a red ribbon. A thin black cat had sunk its claws into the material of the large orange bag she carried, clinging for dear life. However, what Tidus found most remarkable was that this girl was sitting on a broom in midair. A red radio hung from the broomstick softly crooning songs from a music station.

The girl righted herself with a little difficulty and glared at Tidus critically. "Well, since you seem to mean it, I guess that's alright. But in future if you're going to fly around up here just be a little more careful, okay? Bye now."

It appeared as though the girl was about to leave it at that and fly away but Tidus stopped her with a question: "Hang on! How are you flying? Don't tell me you're…"

"I'm using my broomstick of course," the girl said, pointing to the cleaning appliance she was sitting on. "That's what witches do. We fly on broomsticks."

"W-wait, you're a witch?!"

"Of course I am, silly! Couldn't you tell? I ride a broomstick, I wear a black robe, and I have a black cat with me; that all means that I'm a witch."

"Really? So you can cast spells and make potions then?" Tidus gulped. "Look, I'm so, so sorry about crashing into you. I wouldn't like to be a frog, though, so please forgive me."

"I already said: it's okay as long as you're more careful next time. Besides, I'm actually no good at doing spells and potions—my only talent is flying."

"That's all? Then how do you do your witch stuff?"

"I'm not sure what you mean by 'witch stuff' but I make the most of what I've got. I'm running a delivery service around here." The little witch patted her bag. "I have lots of mail and packages to be delivering to people so I'd better get a move on."

"Don't the shadows bother you?" Tidus asked.

"Oh, they do, but I can outrun them up here in the sky. You're worried about me aren't you? Because I look so little. But I've always delivered my packages on time without damages or complaints… at least while I've been in Traverse Town."

"Really? And what do you usually deliver?"

"Well, most things. It's got to be something I can carry. Weight isn't too much of a problem because I can use my magic to make them weightless."

Tidus looked down at the fairy-dust laden case in his hand. "That's great then! You see, I work at the Gizmo Shop."

"Oh! Really? I get lots of requests to send stuff to and from there."

"Lucky for me then! See, I have to do a special order that needs to be taken back to the owner but getting it back means running across Second District again and I don't wanna do that."

"I can help with that, for sure! Here, I'll give you my business card. Give me a call on my telephone when you're finished and I'll deliver it for you. Fees apply, of course."

"Yeah, sure thing," Tidus nodded, taking the little black and white card that the witch held out and reading it aloud. "Ah… 'Kiki's Delivery Service'. Are you Kiki?"

"That's me! And this is my cat Jiji." The black cat was now in a more comfortable position, licking himself. He glanced at Tidus briefly before turning away outright. "That's mean, Jiji!"

Tidus laughed. "Don't worry. I almost knocked him off with that collision. I s'pose he's still mad."

"I guess," Kiki sighed. "Well, I hope to hear from you soon. I'd really better get back to work now. Bye-bye!"

With that last word and a wave Kiki turned her broomstick back on course and continued on her deliveries. Tidus waved back at her. He pocketed the business card and looked down at the case in his hands. "And I should probably get to work too. Hey, fairy! Are you still around?"

The golden fairy darted out in front of him.

"I was just thinking that I should head back to the hostel but I really need your help. Do you know how to fix a typewriter?"

The fairy sighed but it just sounded like a faint tinkle. She put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes. Then, suddenly, she grabbed Tidus by the hair and began to pull back in the direction of the Gizmo Shop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Tinkerbell: I umm'ed and ahh'ed a bit and eventually decided I'd do an entry even though she wasn't introduced by name. Our fairy friend here is Tinkerbell from J.M. Barrie's 'Peter Pan', adapted into a children's movie by Disney. Even though there has been a slew of Tinkerbell movie spin-offs, I'm blatantly ignoring a vast majority of anything that happened in them. I don't mind them giving Tinkerbell friends but to butcher her original character like that? Tsk, tsk, Disney. In other words, all of my inspiration for Tinkerbell's character comes from the Peter Pan movie, not from any Tinkerbell movie.
> 
> Kiki and Jiji: from the animated film 'Kiki's Delivery Service' by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, based on a novel of the same name by Eiko Kadono. It's in Japanese, of course, but interestingly there are a few different versions of the English translation, and one of them was done by Disney. In other words, I call this fair game (not that I've been playing fair so far).


	8. Never Never Never

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaannd... that does it for chapters that were ready! These first 8 really only needed to be a little bit refurbished, not gutted and cleaned out like the rest of it. Now begins the wait for the new stuff.

Tidus landed in the square before the Gizmo Shop, tripping himself in the process and dropping the sewing machine. It bounced lightly on the ground once and then fell heavily as that one touch was all that was needed to cancel the flying magic. In a hurry – so as not to be caught by a shadow creature – Tidus pushed himself up, grabbed his case and ran up the steps, taking them two at a time. The doors of the shop were now locked but with a little flick of the fairy's wrist they clicked open and even swung open by themselves. Tidus hopped inside and closed them. It was dark inside; the foreman had gone home and was probably with everyone else at the lodge eating dinner or sleeping (Tidus had no idea what time it was). With the fairy as his only light, he ascended to his workstation and turned on the lamp.

"Okay, let's work," Tidus said with determination, pulling the partially disassembled typewriter and all of its pieces out so that it was directly in the light.

Under the guidance of the fairy, Tidus tinkered away with the typewriter. The little golden fairy sighed and shook her head when she saw what he had done with it and instructed him on how to put everything back together again. No matter how small or confusing, she had an incredible knack for finding the right place for any piece. However, she discarded one of the larger pieces, instead getting Tidus to check through his workspace's arsenal of spare parts to replace it. With that part in good order and the typewriter back together again, she fluttered into his toolbox and tried to pull out a plastic slip.

"Huh?" Tidus said, pulling it out for her. "These are cloths… for cleaning, I think."

She nodded and kept rummaging through the various repair supplies he had until there was rubbing alcohol, oil lubricant, and a variety of cleaning brushes lined up on the desk. The fairy landed next to the typewriter with a jingle, tapping the machine and then making a motion like she was rubbing something with her forearm. Tidus nodded in realisation. She was telling him to clean it. It was time consuming work. The machine was filthier than Tidus had thought – the cloths and brushes came away stained with grime, rust, dirt, and dust gummed into place by old oil. The desk protector underneath it became grubby with all of the gunk, which he had to wipe away before he would put the machine down again.

When it was finished it looked exactly like it did when Tidus first saw it, only shinier. But just to be sure that it wasn't, he had to do a test run. He rolled a piece of paper into the slider and pushed it to one side, biting his lip.

And he began to type.

The slider took a step with each letter typed, even though no letters were forming due to there being no ink ribbon. Every key Tidus tapped worked perfectly. At the end of the row, Tidus tapped the key for a new line and slid the slider back into its original position. It all worked like a charm. Tidus grinned at the fairy. Now that this one had been solved, Tidus decided that it was time to return to the hostel so he flicked off the light and made his way back downstairs. The fairy climbed into his pocket to go with him.

* * *

The lights on the ground floor of the Tinkerman's Hostel were still on when Tidus arrived, even though nobody was there. He supposed that Madame Ebony must have still been working. Rather than bother her, Tidus crept up the stairs to his own room and once he was there he changed into some nightclothes immediately. The fairy wrestled itself out of his pocket as the clothes made a little pile on the floor.

He took a seat at his desk with a huff of exhaustion and stared up at the stars. The fairy flew over and sat on the windowsill, joining him in stargazing. As the two of them were watching the sky, one star mysteriously twinkled out of existence. It was as though it had never been there in the first place.

"I was told that people come here when they lose their worlds," Tidus said sadly, making the fairy look up at him. "Did that happen to you too?"

She shook her head. Seeing the boy so sad made her think of someone else who she held so dear. She hovered off the sill, trying to think of something that could cheer him up, when something shiny caught her eye. She darted to the top of the cupboard where she saw it while Tidus paid her no mind. Seeing this forgotten contraption made her grin. After all, this boy seemed to really like it when she fixed things, even though she didn't know why. She sprinkled a little fairy dust on it and piled each piece onto a little tower. Despite the dust she still lifted it with some difficulty and brought it over to the desk. Tidus looked down when he heard the thumping of mechanical parts falling on wood.

"What's this?" Tidus asked, picking up one of the larger pieces: a porcelain ballerina standing on her toes on one leg. "I guess whoever lived in this room before me left it here by mistake. Too bad it's broken…"

Not so much broken as disassembled. Tidus watched the fairy pull every single piece out until they were all spread out in front of her. Just like the penguin toy, she started to put them all back together like a puzzle. She moved back every now and again to examine her progress and determine which pieces needed to go next. When she was finished she invited Tidus to put the finishing touch on.

There was a round panel with a hole in it on top of the box the fairy had filled. It corresponded directly to the stem beneath the ballerina's toes. Tidus slipped the ballerina into her rightful place and turned the winder around several times. When he let it go, the music box began to play a sweet melody. As the ballerina turned the fairy took hold of one of her porcelain hands and tip-toed on air as though she was guiding the dancer around her own stage. Tidus smiled.

"Man, you're really amazing," Tidus said. The fairy blushed and for a split second her golden aura turned pink.

A sudden rap on the window made them both look away. A redheaded boy with freckles and a green cap was knocking, looking in with a grin. Tidus gaped at him and hurriedly unlocked the latch to open the window.

"How did you get up here?" he demanded immediately.

"Well…" said the boy, pausing for a dramatic effect if nothing else, "I flew."

"You flew?" Tidus echoed and reminded himself that he was doing just that a bit over an hour ago.

"Yeah, that's right," said the boy, tipping his hat up at the back and taking on a mobster accent: "you got a problem with that?"

He sounded tough but Tidus could tell by the look on his face that he was just playing.

"I was looking for Tinkerbell," the boy said, holding his hand out. The little golden fairy abandoned the music box and stood on his palm. "We have to get back to Neverland soon."

"What? Who are you? And what's 'Neverland'?" Tidus inquired.

"Me? They call me Peter Pan," the redhead said, flying away from the window suddenly and striking a very dignified pose, which only looked very silly in that green elf suit. "And Neverland is the most wonderful place of all the places you could ever think of."

"Why? What's so special about it?" Tidus said, thinking of all of the things that made his island great too.

"In Neverland, when you say never, you can mean it, no matter what it is," Peter Pan answered. At first this didn't make sense to Tidus at all, until Peter continued: "If you say: 'I'm never gonna listen to a grown-up', you never have to. If a boy says: 'I'm never gonna touch a girl and get cooties', he never will. If I say: 'I never wanna grow up', then I won't. Pretty simple."

Tidus chuckled. "Oh, I see. So if I said: 'I never want to lose my friends' I never would."

"Bingo, buddy! In Neverland, if you say never, you mean _never_."

Tidus sighed and rested his head on his forearms. "Problem is I've already lost my friends. And being stuck here working at this stupid factory has got me feeling like I'm doing nothing." Tidus looked up at Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. "I feel like I've given up."

The boy and the fairy exchanged glances. Finally, Peter said: "Well, cheer up, pal. Just because you're not in Neverland doesn't mean you never get to say never."

"That's not what a friend of mine told me," Tidus said, thinking of Riku. "When I was little he once told me that 'everything is possible, 'never' never happens'…"

"Exactly! Which means that nothing is impossible," Peter deducted, flying into the room and putting an elbow on Tidus' head.

"How did you figure that?" Tidus asked. "Besides, at the moment, it looks very probable. Nothing I can say or think will change this."

Peter put a hand to his chin, thinking about the matter. "Maybe you're just not in the right mindset. When you're not in Neverland you need to think more prognomatily."

"You mean 'pragmatically'," Tidus corrected.

"That's what I said! You gotta find the right never-thing to say. Like, say: 'I'll never give up'. That's a good one, right?"

"It is. But how do I 'never give up' if I can't even begin?"

"First, you've got to never give up starting. Then, you never give up doing. After that, you never give up finishing," Peter explained. "Makes sense to me."

Tidus couldn't stop a smile… and then laughed.

"Y'see? Everything's better already," Peter said to Tinkerbell, giving her a wink. "Uh-oh!"

Tidus tried to stop himself laughing and turned to the window where Peter was looking. Winding up to the Second Star to the Right was a long, golden trail.

"Come on, Tink, we gotta skedaddle if we wanna get back to Neverland at all," Peter said, zooming straight out of the window in the direction of the star.

Tinkerbell stayed behind, looking at Tidus sadly. She flitted back to the ballerina's side and a little golden light glowed on the end of her right index finger. On the ballerina's base, around her toes, Tinkerbell wrote in French cursive: Never Give Up.

"Hurry up, Tinkerbell," Peter Pan called from the sky. "I'm getting older by the minute here! Think of what would happen if I got older by a year!"

Tinkerbell giggled and gave Tidus another glance.

"Yeah, I know," Tidus nodded. "He probably needs you and whatnot. I'm not going to be upset if you leave. But it was nice to have you around. Thanks for all the help."

Tinkerbell gave him a fairy kiss on his cheek that felt like a little drop of morning dew being splashed onto his skin. Then she zipped into the Traverse Town sky after Peter, leaving a long trail of fairy dust in her wake.

* * *

Under the streetlight over the hostel's door, Alana, Pippi, and Kaze met up from different directions.

"Did you find him?" Alana asked quickly.

Kaze and Pippi both shook their heads.

"I wonder where he went," Pippi said, "and why. He knows that there are shadow monsters around town."

Alana sucked in a breath. "Okay… let's have one more look-"

Kaze placed a hand on her shoulder. Alana looked up at him as he shook his head at her. "It's already very late and you will put yourself in danger. If he has not returned already, then he's lost."

"No!" Alana sobbed, covering her face. "He can't be… he'll come back, surely."

Pippi swallowed thickly and placed both of her hands on Alana's shoulders gently. "Don't worry. He's a pretty determined guy – at least that's the impression I got. I'm sure he'll pull through and make it back."

"He… he will," Alana sniffed, wiping her face. "The lost always find their way back."

Kaze stepped up to the door and opened it for the two girls. They trudged inside and dragged their feet up to their own rooms. Kaze shut the door and locked it, then went around the lobby making sure all of the lights were put out and the building was secure. There was just one more thing he had to check…

He made his way up the stairs purposefully until he reached the top floor and stood in front of a particular room. The door was unlocked. He opened it just a crack and immediately the sound a music box winding down could be heard. From his position he saw a sheet pulled over a small body and the back of a head of short blond hair and a tanned neck. He shut the door quietly, feeling that everything was as it should be.

* * *

Somewhere in a quirky Wonderland: Sora, Donald, and Goofy defeated the last of the Queen of Hearts' card soldiers, ensuring justice had been rightly served. And yet the victim had vanished! Without any trace left to follow, they continued on in search of the world's heart. In Sora's heart, he hoped that perhaps they'd find her there, safe and sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Peter Pan: the titular character of J.M. Barrie's 'Peter Pan' but it's safe to say that I'm using Disney's version of his character. The original character of Peter Pan is actually a little bit scary...


	9. Weekend Woes

Days passed in the Gizmo Shop. Objects came and went. People came and sometimes, due to their own carelessness, were lost to the shadow monsters. Tidus' time in the shop was still mostly spent flailing with futility as he tried to fix things. With one job down he still had an ever expanding pile of things to work through. Then, to his embarrassment, the foreman had started taking some of his jobs off him, relegating them to other tinkermen who worked with more efficiency and with greater effect. When the weekends came around it was the worst because he had a whole two days to dwell on his spectacular failures. Not to mention the dilemma of trying to find something to do to take his mind off those terrible thoughts. Going outside was dangerous and staying inside was boring. Some few who considered themselves powerful would go out while others would mill around the lobby morosely or shut themselves up in their rooms to entertain themselves somehow. Either way, the people who Tidus normally had friendly encounters with in the Gizmo Shop were usually never around.

At first, Tidus didn't consider leaving the hostel. He kicked his sword under the bed, fearing that if he took it outside he may be discovered by either Rothbart or Odile and then Anya and Bartok would be in deep trouble. However, it only took one weekend of utter boredom to change his mind. Keeping the sword well hidden wrapped in a piece of cloth, Tidus hooked it to his belt and stole out into the streets. He heard that some people often went to a place called 'First District' but he hadn't left early enough to follow them. Instead, he took a wander by himself, strolling through the winding, haphazard streets looking for a place to play.

One didn't have to look very hard to find many interesting things tucked away in random nooks and crannies—fountains, light decorations, bizarre puzzles, and quirky signage were quite common in the town. But every now and then there was something that was utterly amazing to look upon and in a large, square junction between three alleys Tidus came across a garden. All of the plants were growing in pots or on shelves scaling the walls with gaps for windows to peek through. Bluish-white lights poked out of the foliage and illuminated the niche like several bright, pale moons. Water trickled down the walls steadily, draining into a storm drain that bordered the space.

Tidus' throat lurched. The plants and lighting – even the smell – carried the essence of full moon nights on the Destiny Islands. He stepped over the uncovered drainage. It was a nice place, a beautiful place and very defensible should shadow monsters appear. Tidus uncovered his sword and drew it from the hook.

Every time he swung it droplets flung from the blade. Several successive swings worked up a thin mist around him. The blade rippled and wavered like changing currents – a mesmerising sight. Tidus practised with joy, going over all of his swings, strikes, and combos that he would normally hone on the islands with his friends. The sweet scents from the flowers, leaves, and grasses took him to another place and the sword captured his attention and admiration.

"Wow, this thing is amazing. Hey guys! You should-"

Instead of beaches and jungles he was jerked back the reality of stone walls and artificial light. Above him were peaked gables and stars. He lowered his sword, looking up at them sadly.

Buzzing and thumping echoed down one of the alleys, making Tidus turn around. Compared to the junction, the alleys themselves were very narrow and dark. From where he stood the yellow lamps hung uselessly above blackened paths and in the darkness of one street there was a blue spark.

" _Another person,"_ was what Tidus immediately thought as he ran down that alley. Not only was that one light useless, there were several that were out completely. He was barely able to see where the alley turned a corner but as his eyes adjusted to the darkness shadows of shapes began to take form.

It helped that one of them was glowing; lines of bright blue pulsed along her body like veins. The twitching shapes around her didn't have extensive wiring to light them up but their distinctive yellow eyes burned through the darkness. They turned to him, feelers wiggling towards the presence of a new heart.

"Oh no!" Tidus exclaimed but before he could finish the thought the glowing girl dashed for the nearest Shadow, eliminating it with one strike from her glowing chakram. The rest snapped their attention back to her and on instinct they leaped for her.

Those neon lights arced and flashed as she kicked, dodged, and whirled elegantly in the tight space. Every Shadow she claimed was obliterated in a cloud of black, ashy smoke. Tidus stood back and gaped at her impressive acrobatics. He snapped out of his trance when a disturbance behind her caught his notice. She'd turned around to deal with three Shadows and in her blind spot another rose out of the ground. Without a second thought, Tidus lifted his sword and charged towards it. The woman smashed two of the Shadows and rolled out of the way of the third's claws before quickly putting an end to it too. When she looked up she saw a blond for a split second charging but his eyes were fixed at something over her shoulder. His blade sliced the air beside her head and become lodged. She looked over her shoulder. A wriggling Shadow was skewered on the blade of his sword. A single strike from her chakram ended it.

She stood up, getting clear of the sword warily as Tidus sighed in relief.

"Think that's the last of them?" he asked, turning to her.

She looked around. Her vision was much better suited for scouting than his, having better definition and colour correction in low light conditions. She made out the shapes of objects and movement sensitivity was fine-tuned while she scouted, picking up even the smallest flutter of paper. But no more Shadows.

"They're gone," she said with relief. Tidus watched with amazed curiosity as she put her chakram away on the dock between her shoulders. "Thanks for your help."

" _My_ help?" Tidus said in disbelief. "You were kicking ass! I didn't help at all."

"If you hadn't jumped in at the last minute I could have gotten hurt. Those creatures are quite dangerous; if their darkness permeates your being they can destroy you and assimilate the remains to create another one, it's how they spawn. It could take one strike, or it could take an army to bring down one person but everyone's threshold of resistance is unique."

"So…?"

"I don't know what my threshold is," she sighed. "And I don't want to take risks. I've been at this for long enough already."

Tidus nodded understandingly. "Yeah, I can see why… about the taking risks, not the being at it a long time. It sounds like you have a lot of history with the shadow monsters. Who are you?"

"Me?" the woman said, pointing to herself as if there was possibly someone else he could have been referring to. "My name is Quorra. And you're right. I've known about the Heartless for a long time – there's an information package about them in my programming but ever since my world disappeared it hasn't been regularly updated, except with whatever I can observe about them here."

"Programming?" Tidus cut in. "Heartless? Geez, how long have you been here?"

"You must be new around here if you think I'm crazy," Quorra said with an amused smile. "The 'shadow monsters' are called the Heartless. Up until nine years ago I lived in a world that was contained inside a computer and the people who maintained it regularly updated the programs and databases – including my software – with new information about the things they were researching. A lot of it was to do with the Heartless."

"Nine years? Wow, you've been here a long time then. I bet all of that research gave you an edge."

"It's kept me from dying, that's for sure." Quorra's lips quirked into a wry but mirthless smirk for a second. "I've told you a lot about me now. How about you return the favour?"

"Oh, right," Tidus chuckled sheepishly, rubbing the nape of his neck. "I'm Tidus. I'm definitely a newbie, you weren't wrong. I lived on some islands with my friends before everything got swallowed up. I ended up here only a few weeks back and boy am I in way over my head."

"Well, you're still around, so you're not doing too badly. What's got you overloaded?"

Tidus' shoulders slumped. "Heaps of stuff. I wasn't even here for a day before I got recruited to be a tinkerman. And the shadow monsters—I mean, Heartless—have been pretty brutal. It's all… getting used to all of this unfamiliar stuff is kinda hard."

Quorra put a hand on his head, rubbing it a little. "It'll be alright. I've calculated that statistically you're much more likely to survive here once you have a place to stay. Have you found one?"

"Yeah, the Tinkerman's Hostel took me in pretty much immediately."

"Oh?" Quorra said, eyebrows doing a surprised jump. "That's unfortunate."

"How is that unfortunate?"

"Obviously it's fortunate for you but last I heard tinkermen were looking for lodgings outside the hostel because it was full. Clearly it isn't anymore."

"Ah…" Tidus muttered, looking down at the ground with a sick and sinking feeling in his belly. "Nobody told me about that."

"They wouldn't want to upset you—get down!"

She shoved Tidus down before he could react and rolled over his back, picking her chakram off its dock in one smooth motion. Tidus looked through his legs at the Shadow that had just appeared behind him. Almost as soon as he sighted it Quorra destroyed it. She stood with her feet apart, crouched like a predator on edge – something ferocious but wary that there was something out there that was possibly bigger and badder than she was. Her eyes scanned the area, fine-tuning for optimum detection again before she straightened up.

"We should get out of here. They know we're here."

"How?" Tidus asked, putting a hand on his sword but unable to keep the tremble out of his voice. "Like, do they talk to each other?"

"Not exactly. They rely on instinct, not communication so they don't usually organise. But they can operate in similar ways to ants in that when one finds a heart to consume it lets off a signal. Others can sense that signal and follow it to that destination. That doesn't always lead to aggregation, though. Sometimes the Heartless are too far away from each other or they're distracted by nearer hearts but I've noticed that the signalling instinct has much stronger effects in this town than it did in my home world, or in the results of the research of my world's programmers. It seems that Heartless exist here in higher numbers and greater density than they did where I came from."

"Yeah, okay," Tidus gulped, quickly following Quorra as she briskly walked towards the wall garden square. "Getting out of here sounds like a good plan. Do you live near here? We should probably get somewhere closer…"

"I don't live anywhere at the moment," Quorra replied matter-of-factly. "I haven't had a good job for a while so I couldn't pay rent."

"That's awful! Where do you go? How do you get away from Heartless? What do you do when you need to sleep?"

"I don't really need sleep – when my world was destroyed I was grabbed directly out of The Grid so I'm not in a biocalibrated state. I just need to get a few jolts with electricity now and then to maintain my body and that's fairly easy to get access to with minor acts of vandalism." She smirked at Tidus' incredulous expression. "Besides, further is actually safer than closer, so let's take _you_ home."

"Okay, I'll show you where-"

"I know where to go," she interrupted, holding her chakram out in front of her. The inner ring sparked to life and shone a projection above it. Tidus marvelled at the transparent blue image of him and Quorra walking into the square. It zoomed out dramatically until it was a view of the town with a dotted line marking a route to a destination with a spinning pink arrow pointing down at it. "I can't get wireless most places around here but my memory has a record of its location in relation to this place. I was rejected for a job at the Gizmo Shop before."

"Rejected? How? When I went there it seemed like they were so desperate for more people they were literally taking children off the street."

"Overstaffed," Quorra answered with a simple shrug of her shoulders. "Like I said, last time I'd had anything to do with them, the hostel was at capacity."

Hearing it a second time didn't make the shiver down Tidus' body any less dreadful. He kept his hand on the hilt of his sword just in case while they followed Quorra's map through the streets that had led him here in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Quorra: A character from the newer Tron movie, 'Tron: Legacy'. I'm going to admit, I do realise that there's a whole franchise surrounding that movie but I have never looked into it because I didn't think the movie was very good or entertaining enough for my investment. But damn it was shiny.


	10. Blueprinting

It didn't take long for Tidus to become bored of being on edge, especially when after a while nothing jumped out at them at all. Quorra wasn't so alert but then again she had been weathering the Heartless and the ups and downs of Traverse Town for nine years. For most of the way back they chatted amicably as new friends did, Tidus finding Quorra to be talkative and easy to get along with.

"So, you don't have a job now but you've had one before, right?"

"I've had several," she replied honestly. "Mostly contract work and that's part of the problem, not much has been permanent. The last job I had would have been permanent but then the Heartless appeared and assimilated a few people including all of the managers, effectively terminating the business and leaving me without work. You'd think with so many openings the job market would be easy to navigate but the economic structural damage has placed a lot of restrictions. At the moment I'd be lucky if I could land a contract."

"Look, to be honest, I'm not even going to pretend to understand all of that 'job market' stuff," Tidus admitted. As they got closer to more familiar buildings he was finally willing to casually take his hand off his sword.

"Don't bother. It doesn't even enter the equation unless you lose your job, so try not to do that."

"Heh…" Tidus chuckled awkwardly.

The familiar lamp over the door of the hostel came into view as they rounded a wide-angled corner. Tidus smiled and sighed with relief. They were almost back and that would mean they were safe.

"Do you know if there are still job vacancies at the Gizmo Shop?" Quorra inquired interestedly. "Maybe I can get a job here this time if they're lacking staff."

Tidus hummed while he thought about it and scratched his head. The sign-in board for their employee cards still had a handful of empty slots and there were still rooms on his floor that were free. He was already growing to like Quorra and sending her off to continue to be homeless in the streets didn't sit well with him.

"I think so…?" he replied. "You can ask Madame Ebony, she'll know. Although, I'll bet they'll be more than happy to just give you my job. I suck at it."

"That so? Then you weren't lying about them being desperate for people."

Tidus shoved her lightly and Quorra snickered. That they were already so comfortably friendly with each other warmed him inside. "You know what? Maybe I won't introduce you to Madame Ebony. If they get more good people they might fire me and then I'd get kicked out of the hostel."

He'd meant it only lightly but the smirk fell off Quorra's face instantly. "You're right. It would be a bad idea for you to be out on the street. Maybe I should remove myself from this equation—go find work somewhere else."

"I didn't mean it like that! I… look, I…"

"It's okay, you don't have to explain yourself to me. You wouldn't be as well-equipped as I am for homelessness in this town; displacing you would be a mistake that I'm not willing to risk. Unless…"

She stopped just beyond the reach of the light from hostel's sconce, folding her arms and staring straight ahead. Her face was slightly pinched in concentration, like she was calculating. Tidus stared at her curiously.

"Yes!" she suddenly said, dropped her arms to her side and looking at Tidus with a grin. "If we raise your mean productivity, it's likely that the foreman won't notice your below average performance."

"When you put it like that…" Tidus grumbled, rubbing his arm like a blow had been delivered in that statement. "Below average…"

"See, look at it this way: the foreman might not care in the short term about individual low performance if factory output is steady or rising. That overall output is calculated by overall productivity, which is based on productivity means. If that's raised by a big burst of high quality work then you might be overlooked and that'll give you time to improve to a regular level of good work without worrying about losing your job in the meantime."

"That sounds great but how am I going to do that?"

"With help, of course."

"Help?" Tidus questioned, eyebrows rising. "You mean you're…"

"Going to help you at intervals to bring up your standard of work. We should try to do it at times when the foreman isn't going to notice. That'll defeat the purpose of doing it in the first place."

Tidus blew out a big puff of air. "Good luck with that. You can't get into the Gizmo Shop when Foreman Ivory isn't there, he locks up every night and he's pretty thorough. The only other way is through Second District and last time I went there it was crawling with shadow monsters."

"Heartless," Quorra corrected.

"Right, Heartless," Tidus repeated, testing the word on his tongue. It was a strange word to call a creature even if it did make a lot of sense.

"That shouldn't be a problem for me," Quorra boasted, taking her chakram off her back. "Most of the technology in this town is pretty basic and I've got mad hacks. I'll show you and we could even start today."

A time display appeared in her weapon's inner circle briefly. "There's still a lot of time until the hour gets suspicious."

"And you'd be willing to just do that for me?" Tidus asked in disbelief but also with heaping of relief. "Even though I can't pay you or give you a place to stay?"

Quorra shrugged. "I'm jobless and homeless and don't suffer from the user consequences of that so I mostly just get bored. Plus I want to see the inside of that building. Everyone says it's crazy."

"Yeah, well, I don't think they're wrong." Tidus mussed the hair at the back of his head then gestured for Quorra to follow. "Alright, let's go. I'll show you my workstation."

With that, they bypassed the hostel and headed straight into the square and up the steps to the doors of the Gizmo Shop. As Tidus predicted, they were locked – a cast iron padlock that lay across the seam between the double doors to make even beating the door down difficult. Quorra held her chakram over the padlock's keyhole. The inner circle glowed again and filled with light, beaming down on the lock and strengthening its beam on the keyhole. A laser light travelled up and then down twice, scanning the entire device.

"Analysis complete," Quorra reported robotically and then she turned to Tidus with a smirk. "Here's where my hacks get mad."

She turned back to her chakram and Tidus' gaze swapped to it too. In the beam an image began to construct. Tidus' eyes widened in amazement. The see-through image was made up of nothing but lines of varying brightness and thickness, creating a hovering imitation of the padlock, with the most well-defined lines being of the complex contraption within.

"What is that? Is that what it looks like inside?"

Quorra nodded, focussing on her work. She put her hand through her weapon and into the beam, flicking her fingers to blow away the outer lines that were of no use until all that was left what the mechanical part. Delicately, she began to manipulate her hologram, asking Tidus' help to place his finger in some places to jam the contraption while she worked on other sections. Whether the image was tangible or – and more impressively where – was completely controlled by Quorra and when she twisted the hologram into its final position there was a _click_ and a _clang_. The padlock dropped. Quorra deactivated her weapon while Tidus pushed the lock aside, opening the door just enough for them to both enter.

"Oh, wow!" Quorra breathed as she stepped further into the room, marvelling at the workshops and garish colour scheme. Tidus closed the door slowly and quietly. "It's so big in here. It sort of reminds me of home with all of the platforms and the way the lights are arranged in those shapes."

"That's what's getting you? Not that it looks like the colour scheme was decided by a classroom of pre-schoolers?" Tidus asked, coming into step with her.

Quorra giggled. "It actually isn't uncommon in this town for people to design interiors to be so bright. Some urban myths say that it helps keep the Heartless away. Unfortunately, that's all it is—urban myth. Besides, it's nice to have all of this colour around. Doesn't it evoke pleasurable emotions in users?"

"Users… of what?"

"Sorry, my language algorithms sometimes revert to Grid definitions after a while, since they're default in my programming. I'm talking about people; people built from organic compounds automatically arranged in a natural order. Don't you find this atmosphere joyful?"

"Eh, I guess I'm too bummed out by work to take much notice," Tidus said, linking his fingers behind his head nonchalantly. "Besides, pink isn't really my colour."

He jerked his thumb in the direction of the elevator. "I'll show you my workstation."

On the way up, despite the yellow and black caution band around the elevator and words warning passengers to keep their limbs within it at all times, Quorra still leaned over the railing a couple of times to examine the small repairs department. Tidus had to pull her back in before she got hit on an upcoming beam. Once they reached the high up floor of Tidus' workstation he led her down the bridges that took them to workspace 779. Tidus jumped off the step and turned to face Quorra, spreading his arms out grandly.

"Well, this is where I work."

Quorra paused to take it in. "It's a bit of a mess… no offence."

"None taken," Tidus shrugged. He looked over his workspace. It had gotten cluttered over the weeks with new gizmos and gadgets, as well as tools and parts that he hadn't put away properly or just dropped and forgotten about.

Quorra walked around his workstation, using a wider beam from her chakram to scan it. "Surely the best way to start would be to get organised. Let's take inventory of what you've got."

Tidus sighed. "That'll take all the time we have toda—huh?!"

Quorra's chakram threw up a holographic screen, arranging an image of everything in his workstation into like categories.

"Whoa! You tidied up everything so quickly!"

"No I didn't," Quorra said, looking around his workstation in puzzlement. "This place is still a mess. I just took the best scan I could hope for to help with finding and identifying the available parts and tools. Among other functions, my Identity Disc can recreate objects in space and with the right parameters can also emulate the spatial boundaries themselves."

"Er… so basically, what you did to the padlock?"

"Yes."

"Can you do it with other things too?"

"Of course I can. Just watch."

Quorra turned to one of Tidus' assigned gizmos – a financial calculator – and held her disc up to it. The scanner beamed across it several times before Quorra deemed it to be ready. She pointed the beam into the air in front of her and just like the padlock it began to construct a transparent line image with all of the parts in full view. Putting her hand inside the disc again, she commanded the hologram, exploding the pieces away from each other and then reorganising them flat like the inventory she just took. In the corner of her mid-air screen a model of the complete calculator appeared.

Tidus' jaw dropped. "Whoa. If my friends were able to see this, man. I can't wait to tell them! Oh… but I might not get to…"

He looked down, kicking away some of the pieces on the floor miserably. Quorra turned to him, eyebrows slanting in sympathy. "You miss your people, hm?"

"Who doesn't?" Tidus replied tetchily.

"Hey, I understand. There are people I miss too." She lowered her Identity Disc, looking up and gazing far off like she was staring through time, staring at her memories. She swallowed thickly and her brow creased, her entire face twitching in discomfort. She shook her head and lifted the Identity Disc. "Anyway, it looks like the problem is in the motherboard. Some of the circuitry has shorted out – might have been overuse or batteries with the wrong voltage. That's extremely delicate work to do by hand and would require a specialist. Better off just switching it out for a new one."

"So that's it?"

Quorra hadn't picked up the bitter tone when she turned to him. "Yes, that's all I…"

Her head pulled back in surprise at the way Tidus stood with his arms crossed and an irritated glare levelled at her. "You're just going to turn away and keep busy with whatever junk you find because the past is too hard? Maybe you should take my job and I'll go wander around town. At least then I can start actually looking for my friends and you can stay here with everyone else who's in denial."

"Don't lecture me!" she screamed at him, swinging her disc down in rage. The hologram slammed against solid objects in the workstation and smashed like glass. The pieces shrunk into nothingness. "What would you know? My world was consumed by the darkness nine years ago and I still remember the day it happened! And that wasn't even the beginning of… of…"

Tidus lowered his arms. "Alright, I'm sorry, let's just drop it," he apologised, looking away guiltily. "That was really insensitive of me to presume."

Quorra turned back to her disc, pulling up the hologram again. She sighed. "You're new so it's still fresh for you. I lost some friends in the storm of darkness but I lost a lot of them before that too. In the information packages that were replicated in my program by the researchers, there were a lot of experiments about people who were taken by the darkness and what would happen to them afterwards. It's… depressing. None of them were able to be turned back. They tried a couple of times but the process seems irreversible."

"That's what everyone's already told me." He shrugged his arms into the air. "There's no known way to get your world back, there's no way to get your friends or family back if they're not already in town. They're all just happy to settle for being miserable and hoping that something good will come to them."

"Having hope isn't a bad thing, sometimes you need it," Quorra advised. "The researchers who gave me the information on the Heartless, they couldn't find a way to change them back but over the years I've continued to go over the data and try all sorts of analysis techniques. No matter what I try, there's always this slight anomaly that can't be explained away. The original research identified it too and they tried so hard up until the last minute to figure out how to crack that anomaly. But they never did and I don't have the means here to do it myself. If they did, maybe they could have reversed things. That's the hope that I'm banking on. It must be a larger stretch of the imagination for people like you who weren't given that kind of evidence, that's why I'm telling you; you need to know that there's something that you can bank your hope on. It's not futile. As this town grows and more people lose their homes, it's more likely that someone will identify that anomaly too and then they'll work to crack it. You know when they do that it'll be possible for everyone to go home again. However, nobody wants to lose their new friends in the process."

She left that hanging. Tidus nodded solemnly. Adding more people to casualty list wouldn't help anybody and yet for the first time in a while a deep-seated relief settled in. Quorra had given him evidence that having hope wasn't futile.

"In the meantime," she said, turning the hologram to Tidus. "Didn't you have work to finish today? I can make a blueprint like this of everything here to help you work through these gadgets. That could even help you out during the week when I'm not able to assist you."

"Thanks," Tidus replied, giving her a smile even if it couldn't reach his eyes just yet. "This really means a lot to me."

"Like I said, it's no problem." She shrugged one shoulder. "Now let's see if we can find a new motherboard for this guy."


	11. Something More

Quorra's help really sped him along and during the week Tidus felt more capable than ever. Even watching as Quorra fixed things that he had no idea where to start with gave him a better idea of how to go about his work. Already he was beginning to start projects that he didn't need help to finish. There was just one problem: the toy car. No matter what he tried to fix it the engine wouldn't go. Tidus had gone through several sets of batteries, replaced all of the machinery inside it and even given its chassis a new paint job (with flames) as if that might help. The car had only ever activated for a few seconds at most and then ceased to function. It got to the point where Quorra and Tidus were left stumped. With no idea of what else to do, Tidus took it down to the foreman one morning.

"I've tried everything," Tidus said, finishing his explanation of his efforts (trying his best not to mention Quorra).

" _I have_ ," Ivory corrected sternly. After a few weeks in this place Tidus had already learned to ignore it.

"It's basically a brand new machine by now."

" _It is_."

"Sorry to let you down like this." Tidus glanced at the car lying across the papers on the foreman's desk and then looked down at his feet in remorse as he scuffed his boots. "I can't fix it."

"You ' _cannot_ '. Then there is nothing else we can do," Foreman Ivory said with a regretful shake of his head.

"Are you sure? Maybe someone else just needs to have a try," Tidus argued. "There's surely something we can do for it."

" _There is_."

"Really?" Tidus exclaimed, looking up with eyes shining in hope.

"No, I meant that you should say 'there is'. Contractions are the mark of laziness. As for the car, there is nothing that we can do. You said yourself that you tried all that you could think of, replaced every part. By all means it should be working now." Ivory picked it up with both hands and looked at it sadly. "However, not all objects are merely as they appear. Some of them have something a little… more. It is more than we are able to repair with our tools and machinery." He stood up and walked to the other side of his desk, handing the toy back to Tidus.

"Um… so, what am I supposed to do with it now?" Tidus asked.

The foreman shook his head exasperatedly. "It is still your responsibility. Write the clients a letter explaining the situation and send it with the car to the deliveries department. Make sure to explain that since we were unable to fix their gizmo there will be no fee charged and the return delivery is on us."

"Right. I'll get on that," Tidus replied, ignoring the foreman's correction as he put the car under his arm and walked out of the office.

* * *

At the end of the day Tidus exited the building with most of his co-workers, head down and his hands in his pockets. It wasn't quite dinnertime yet so he headed up all five flights of stairs to his floor but he didn't feel much better by the time he got to his bedroom door and turned his room key in the lock. He dropped his things on his desk haphazardly, looking at them and the few other things he had accumulated over his time in Traverse Town. It was really dismal, considering the time he'd been here. There was a small novel that Miley insisted he should read even though he hadn't started yet, a coupon booklet that had come in the mail since he was a new resident, and some miscellaneous bits and bobs that had accumulated in his room from work. Most of them were just nuts and bolts but there were also some business cards for contacting specialists when parts or advice were needed. Tidus pushed the cards around on his desktop, glancing at the names, titles and self-proclaimed expertise but there were no toy experts in his collection.

He sighed, picking up the business card for Kiki's Delivery Service. "Well, I guess it's the delivery expert again."

A twinge of sorrow tickled under his sternum like an itch. Something the foreman made him loath to leave things like this. ' _Something more_ …' something that made it more than just a machine. And if it wasn't just a machine they couldn't just throw it back like a broken toy that was being passed back and forth between children who didn't want it. That wasn't right. It ached in his ribcage—the feeling that he had to do _something more_.

He opened the window just to let a bit of fresh air waft in when suddenly there was a face in front of his, nose-to-nose. He squealed and leaped back, falling gracelessly on his back. Quorra stared at him expectantly, hanging upside down in the window.

"What did he say?" she asked.

Tidus groaned, sitting up and rubbing his back. "Exactly what you thought he was gonna say. Nothing we can do. And for the record, I did not scream like a little girl just then."

"Of course you didn't," Quorra responded. "Your vocal pitch fluctuated higher than normal but not an unusual range for a pubescent male. All other audio diagnostics agree that your voice has maintained consistent readings unique to you."

Tidus stared nonplussed at her. "Er… good then? Anyway, forget about that. The point is: you were right. We don't have any options anymore and the foreman wants me to send it back to the owners."

"Actually, I was thinking about that…" Quorra's head disappeared and was replaced in short order with her feet as she swung herself through the window to sit on Tidus' desk. "I still maintain that we don't have any more options _here_ but sometimes when a problem is unsolvable the solution is to go back to the source code."

"The source code?"

"In The Grid, when an error occurs that can't be repaired or rectified by a patch the users would reset the program to its default settings, often with the use of the drive containing the original copy of the code."

"I get it!" Tidus exclaimed excitedly, jumping to his feet. "So, if I go back to the owners and ask them about the toy personally they might be able to help."

"Exactly what I was thinking."

"Okay! I'll get to it!"

Tidus skidded over to his cupboard and threw it open. He found an empty canvas bag in the top shelf and started to stuff it with anything and everything he thought he would need over the weekend. Quorra stared at him in disbelief.

"Wait a minute! You can't seriously be thinking of going _right now_. You still have unfinished work."

"It's the weekend!" Tidus scoffed. "Nobody's going to care if I don't work on the weekend. In fact, it'll probably make them more suspicious."

"Technically, it's not the weekend for another six hours."

"Close enough." Tidus buckled the bag shut and nodded in satisfaction. Now he had a call to make.

* * *

Tidus still had dinner at the hostel that night, telling Madame Ebony that he'd be away for the weekend. That declaration had quickly elicited concern from Alana and Miley, who hovered one either side of him trying to tease out the details of where he was going and what he was doing and how they would know he'd be safe there but Tidus was mischievously vague about it. Annoyingly, it had also elicited interest from Pippi, who had bounced around begging for him to take her along. By the end of his meal he managed to distract her by pointing out that an extremely tall, rabbit-eared woman and a crooked-nosed man were about to start a game of darts. While she went to bother them about joining in, Tidus swept up the last of his stew with his final bite of bread and then piled all of his dishes together to take back to the kitchen.

The kitchen had a little alcove next to the bar and service area where the residents were expected to return their dishes. It was the only part of the kitchen that non-kitchen staff were allowed into normally. Access to the kitchen proper was restricted by a long stainless steel bench and the little space was quite humid due to the nearby industrial dishwasher. He wanted to be in and out quickly to sneak past Pippi on his way back to his room but he was stopped by the kitchenhand saying:

"Hey, Tidus, you going out again this weekend?"

Tidus had just been about to escape but he stopped and turned around. The brown-haired kitchenhand was young but perhaps a little bit older than Tidus. Tidus had heard his name was 'Jim' but had never confirmed it since the guy was quiet and usually kept to himself with a closed-off expression or a scowl. But at this moment he surprised Tidus with a softer, wide-eyed expression of concern.

"Uh, yeah," Tidus replied. "It'll be a bit of a trip so I might not be back until Sunday."

"I see. Well, thanks for telling Madame Ebony. She was really worried about you last week when you took off and didn't come back 'til late." Jim collected a stack of plates and turned back to the dishwasher, shutting off abruptly.

Tidus raised an eyebrow. "Um, okay, no probs. Is that all you wanted to say?"

"Yeah," Jim answered, adopting that isolating glare he usually had. "Also, er… be really careful. And be sure to come back."

He quickly lowered his head and went back to work, covering his face with his bangs but Tidus still caught the pink glow of embarrassment on his cheeks.

"Don't worry, I'll do everything I can to be back here by dinnertime on Sunday," Tidus assured him with a grin. "At the latest."

Jim's bangs weren't long enough to hide his smile. Tidus turned back to the exit and tip-toed out. Pippi was trying to impress a gaggle of onlookers by attempting to throw four darts at once all held between the fingers of one hand. Since she was distracted Tidus made a beeline for the stairs.

When he got up to his room there was a familiar little witch peering through his window. He ran over to throw it open for her and smiled. "Hi Kiki. Did I keep you waiting?"

"A little bit," she pouted. "For a moment there I thought I'd come to the wrong place. Usually when a tinkerman has something for me to deliver I pick it up from the Gizmo Shop."

"I definitely said here," Tidus confirmed, going about his room to pick up the toy car wrapped messily in newspaper and his backpack.

Kiki looked at the package he handed her, turning it over and over in curiosity. "You said you had a special delivery but this looks like a normal package."

"Well, that's only part of the delivery," Tidus admitted, climbing onto the windowsill. "Here's part two: do you think you could deliver me as well? It's to the same place."

He smiled hopefully at her as she gaped at him. " _You_?! I run a delivery service, not a taxi service! Besides, broomsticks usually only carry one person."

"Please?" Tidus begged, putting his hands together. "I gathered up the money to pay you for the extra weight but there's this job I care about and I need to go to the client at the same time as the item."

"You could just call a taxi to drive you there and carry this in your lap," she argued, thrusting the package back at him. "It's not heavy!"

"Do you want this job or not?"

Kiki huffed but didn't reply immediately. She mulled it over for several seconds before putting the package in her delivery bag. She scooted forward to make room on the back of her broom as she carefully angled it parallel to Tidus' window.

"You'd better have the excess weight fee," she muttered as Tidus climbed onto the back of her broom.

Jiji meowed in disgruntlement when he was nearly knocked off the bristles twice, first by Tidus' foot and then by his butt. However, he calmed down when he realised that Tidus' bag acted as a convenient shelf and was easy to sink his claws into. The broomstick dropped about a metre before Kiki managed to correct for the extra weight and then it started to climb. She picked up speed when they made it over the ridges and steered her broom on a direct route to the recipient's address.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Choo-choo! Here comes the hiatus train to drop of Chapter 11... and pick up Chapter 12.
> 
> Glossary:
> 
> Jim Hawkins: the main character in 'Treasure Planet', the Disney movie that is basically just 'Treasure Island' but in space! Some people think this movie is kind of 'meh' because they have wrong opinions. I thought it was amazing.


End file.
